the connection
I've never been to Vietnam, but the sounds and the music from
that era
can evoke memories in me of
pain -
especially when I hear a helicopter
flying overhead.
I am drawn into the jungle,
green and dark.
I imagine myself a soldier,
whose only mission is to die.
Lying in the mud,
awaiting ambush,
I crouch.
I want to run, but there is nowhere to
run to.
Memories of a forgotten life.
I see my uncle, Luis, who was a convoy
driver. I don't remember Luis before the
War, but I knew him after. He was tall with
black hair. Luis smiled a lot, maybe because
he was in love with my Aunt Kathy. Once I
saw a side of him that was dangerous. He
struck my aunt. Not thinking, I broke a pool
stick across his back. He chased me round the
pool table. I stayed just out of reach, all the
while telling him off. Somehow that humored
him. Whether it was my actions or words, I'll
never know, but I never saw that side of him
again. Soon after, I went to live with them in
a small travel trailer made for one.
He talked of going down roads on
which, the convoy knew, awaited the
invisible enemy. "The Chinks," he called
them, a name to distance himself from the
thought that they looked much like some
of the people from our hometown.
The soldiers in his convoy would
shoot up heroin and sandbag their trucks,
hoping no bullet could pierce their shield or
ricochet through. They would lie on the
truck floor, relying on the ruts in the road
to guide their passage.
There was only the one road.
Luis' platoon had a monkey for a mascot.
He was shot through the head on one of
the trips. I could sense sadness
when he told me this part mixed with an
awareness of luck. After all, it was the
monkey who had died and not Luis himself.
Everyone wrote something on their truck
for luck. Luis wrote on his truck,
'Cosa mala nunca muerde' –
`A bad thing never dies.'
I guess he had burned that Karma by the time
I came to know him. I was in the concrete jungle
of Manhattan Island that summer. My friends
tried to wake me up for breakfast. That morning,
as if in a dream, I swung my fists and fought off
my friends. This event was very real. I had never
missed breakfast throughout the whole trip.
It was a tour of the thirteen original colonies
during the bicentennial year, the colonies that
had changed the face of America. Luis's fate was
to change me. Once Luis said that he had
woken up fighting anyone who tried to wake him
up for two years after he came home. He was in
Alamogordo, New Mexico that morning while
I was miles away across the nation. I never went
to his funeral.
I remember my uncle,
who was a convoy driver in Vietnam,
who came back a junkie,
who died from an overdose,
who was thrown by the railroad
tracks,
discarded like yesterday's newspaper.
He left me with a piece of him.
I've never been to Vietnam,
but I have memories that cause me
pain
when I hear a helicopter fly overhead,
whose sound is like a rushing
heartbeat,
filled with fear.. .
racing ...
with nowhere to run.