Feathers Falling From a Swan

It was a grim celebration standing at the Vietnam Memorial Wall in June, 2000 on the thirtieth anniversary of my brother Frank's death in that long war.  Frank Stempke would have been fifty years old next month, but his short life didn't get him to twenty.  I was fifteen when these two United States Marines showed up on our doorstep in the first week of summer vacation when I was looking forward to my final little league season as our team's star pitcher.  Frank spent many hours teaching me to throw a change up and a curve before he left for Vietnam.  My mother opened the notice signed by President Nixon informing her that her oldest son Frank Willard Stempke had died in a small village near the Vietnam-Cambodia border on June 7, 1970.  The two stone faced Marines dressed in their Class A uniforms, helped mom into a nearby chair after she collapsed, appearing as if this was not the first person who cried out before passing out on the floor.  

After Frank's service a week before his birthday, my mother squeezed my hand and whispered into my ear, "Doug, you're not going to Vietnam, we will do our best to get you a student deferment."

But by the time I turned eighteen, the draft like the war was winding down so when I enrolled at the community college, Saigon had fallen and the war was over.  When I showed up for my first official college class in government, the class roll included three students in wheelchairs placed in the class by their V.A. vocational counsellors. Wearing patches protesting the war on their tattered green combat fatigues and caps, beards that were tangled, hair that wove a crooked cushion behind their backs, coarse language adding to their story of struggle to overcome the disabilities the war had given them, once they found out my brother was K.I.A.(killed in action), I became an honorary brother.  Each of them shared their stories with me including when the med-vac came to get the out of the shit.  Their stories were colorful and graphic in nature as Richard said he was taking a dump when the VC sniper got him. 

"I lay in my own shit for over two hours." He said as the other two shook their heads in reverence of his sacrifice.  

"Little man," Alton pontificated in his usual theatrical manner.  Alton was black and very proud of it as his Afro was too massive to take in with one glance punctuated by a wide psychedelic band covering part of his shiny forehead, a narrow strip of skin visible before his big sunglasses took over the rest of the upper part of his face. "Our platoon lost five men before I got smoked.  It took over a day before they could get us outta there.  By then my spine was too damaged to repair."

Jude came from a small town in Kentucky where houses are still waiting to get electricity installed and running water to replace the outhouses.  He did not like colored folks before being sent to Vietnam where guys like Alton changed his mind about them boys being worthless in combat.  When he went back home he was a changed man while the rest of his folks remained the same until he could no longer tolerate it and moved away winding up at the Y.M.C.A.  College became his way out of his current situation.  He summed it up like this, "Back home we was poor white trash, so I come here to get away from that small mindedness, but the I run smack into all over again as some of my neighbors asking me what the heck I'm going to college for in the first place. Ain't no limit or geographical location for ignorance, because you can find it everywhere."  

While I was part of their camaraderie in the sense I did not share their combat experience or their war stories, because my brother Frank was one of their number, that made me part of their brotherhood of which I took a great deal of pride in.  Hanging out together on campus with them automatically said a great deal about me I wasn't aware of, but found out in a hurry.

"Baby killer." I heard a girl remark as she walked by us.  

"Nice ass, sweetheart." Richard called after her.  She turned and glared at him before throwing her head back and stomping off indignantly as Richard chuckled, "Gets 'em every time, self righteous bitch." 

"You ever kill any babies?" Alton asked with an air of pretend academic sophistication. 

"Every morning when I roll out to get the morning newspaper." Jude chimed in.

The world kept turning as our friendship deepened and became as solid as cement, but tit was largely due to the fact that when I was hanging out with them, I felt like Frank was there with us.  If he had lived, he would have fit right in.  There were other veterans from the war, but they were busy trying to shed their image as an ex-soldier since America had suffered its first military defeat.  

"Easy for them to pretend, ain't it." Richard commented one day in the cafeteria, "They come out without obvious damage." 

"Yeah boy, they still pretty." Alton purred as he sipped on a milk shake. "Get this, you know someone had the nerve to call me the N-word, yesterday?"

"Yeah Whadda do about It?" Jude asked, stuffing some fries into his mouth.  

"I was very direct and honest and I said, 'Mama, ya all gotta quit calling me that.'" Alton and the other two shared a good belly laugh.  

The two years we were together at the community college turned out to be the best years of my life as we shared laughs along with the struggles, including when Alton informed me and Richard that Jude was back on the junk and we formed an intervention to snap him out of his deep depression.  Laying on his bed, Jude told us how his platoon got ambushed at the pic Buddhist temple.  They had to dig in for two days while the VC poured on mortar and small arms fire.  

"I lay there for two days unable to feel my toes or legs for that matter. Medic Mike had me wrapped in pretty good so I wouldn't bleed out while we were pinned down.  All I could see was that big idol of Buddha staring out at me in that lotus position as if to say, 'Why are you here killing my people?' I don't know." Tears flowed from his expressive blue eyes as it seemed the pain of that horrible day was being replayed in his mind.  

"Grab his shoulders." Richard commanded me.

"Nawooo." He wailed as I grabbed his shoulders while Alton and him took his legs and we put him in his wheelchair next to the bed jammed into the corner of the tiny room. He glared at each of us in turn.  

"We need to do a road trip.  Called Sammy and he's cool." Alton used his fingers as if he was pulling the strings of a marionette .

"No, I'm not going to visit that pinko bastard." Jude declared knowing resistance was futile.  

Sammy Morse lived in a modest one story cabin on the rocky coast.  A chopper pilot in Vietnam, he was as Dr. Leary had instructed drop in and drop out.  It would be the first time I smoked marijuana sitting on his deck overlooking the jagged rocks being constantly washed over by the white caps. Sammy passed me a bong still smoking from the hit he took and trying not to let the smoke from escaping his mouth, said, "Copacetic."

And indeed it was as we all sat there hypnotized by the gray scenery. Jude was still morose as he sat there in his wheelchair.  Sammy noticed, "Hey there big cat, what's going on with you."

Jude shook his head as Alton elicited a response, "Come on dude, this is the Big Kahuna, the master guru comin' atcha." Sammy nodded.

After exhaling a long breath, Jude began to open up saying he had a flashback after being trigger by a sudden bang.  He talked about the fire fight and how his buddy turned to him and he had no face left as he tried to emit a scream from a bloody hole that had been his mouth just moments before.  Jude spurred on by his nightmare vision put his M-16 on automatic and emptying two full clips into the jungle as he screamed out in both terror and rage.  

"Some heavy shit, maaaannnn." Sammy whistled and put his arm around Jude. "Hey Jude don't be afraid, take a sad song and make it better" He hummed the rest of that famous Beatles tune which calmed Jude down.

The next morning we left our senses still abuzz from Sammy's killer shit and drove back to the city, the healing had begun.

When you leave us, little man, you must remember all that you have seen and heard here." Alton was pontificating as he liked to do every chance he got.  We were into the final lap of our second year and I had applied and accepted Cal State which was what we were celebrating in the cafeteria at the time.  Each of them had given me a replica of their dog tags, the original ones hung around each of their necks still.  To be given a replica meant you were part of the company, an honor I never took lightly.  Back home, mom had Frank's basic training photograph framed with his dog tags encased inside the frame that hung in the den with the rest of the framed family photographs.  "Each of us is like feathers of a Swan, each different in some small way and yet same enough so you can't tell no difference unless you look closely.  Students pass us each day and never see it...the truth.  The truth about who we really are."

During the commencement ceremony that June, I had the honor of pushing Richard Wallace, Alton Jackson, and Jude Curruthers across the stage to receive their associates diploma on a very warm morning. None of them got more than a smattering of applause, but in my heart, I was giving them a twenty one gun salute and somewhere in the swarm of chaotic activity, I swore I heard Frank say, "Good going, kid."  I longed to feel him embrace, but that would never come.  

No one came to celebrate with them, but Richard explained, "Folks don't want to hear about what really happened over there.  They see that young lieutenant followed by a ditch full of dead Vietnamese bodies and they cannot believe our sons could do such a savage thing.  And the truth is we were ordered to do just about every time we went on patrol, maybe not as much as that, but if it meant our survival, we all pulled the trigger.  Once you come home, people are more than willing to tell you what a monster you were for killing women and children while you were in-country.  After a while you get sick of listening to all these draft dodgers who ain't got a clue. Even you, Little Man, you will never fully understand what your brother Frank went through.  It's okay, kid.  I am sorry he didn't come home."  

The other two bowed their heads as he finished talking.  After a moment, Alton reached up and slapped me on the shoulder, "Keep in touch, Little Brother,"

"Little Brother?" I gasped.

"Yeah y'all been promoted." He laughed.

"Dude, keep in contact." Sammy insisted as we had a blow out party at his cabin later that night.  Richard was already out snoring in his wheelchair becoming an invite for Alton to get out a couple of permanent markers and practicing his face painting on his sleeping friend.

"I'm going to go to Cal State Sacramento and then I'm going back home to become a counselor for disabled G.I.s" Jude declared as Alton continued to giggle at his artwork masterpiece.

"You will be so good at that." I nodded.

"Dudes!" Sammy exclaimed nearly waking Richard in the middle of a master stroke administered by Alton.  Sammy was stoned, but had turned his television on, "Tricky Dick has resigned leaving Gerald Ford as his replacement." 

"Who?" Jude mumbled.

"Yeah, exactly, huh." Sammy pointed to the flickering television screen.  And so gathered around a flickering picture of Nixon speaking his resignation speech. Thus would be my final memory of them.  I would like to say that we kept in touch, but I'd be fibbing.  

I spent the rest of the summer with my parents.  My mother had become too paralyzed to drive any longer and so I became her primary chauffeur much to the relief of my father.  He took me up to the hills for a fishing trip weekend.  He had a rowboat with a twelve horsepower engine and we puttered to the middle of the lake where we could get our fishing lines wet.  I could tell there was something heavy on his mind, but he was usually tight lipped about such matters so when he finally spoke, it startled me.

"Your mother is getting worse." He started as he tied a lure onto his line before letting it out into the mirror still lake.

"Worse how?" I asked, doing the same to my line.

"Ever since your brother…" he could not go on as the crushing blow of my brother's death was crushing him as well.  It was just that mom was better able to express her grieving, but then there were certain recent behaviors that were disturbing like her continual spdusting of my brother's shrine in the den. "Doctor says the trauma is wearing down her brain as he explained it so I would understand. She forgets to turn off the stove and garbage disposal.  She packed up his clothes to take to the Salvation Army,but when I came home from work, she had locked herself in his old room and was sobbing over the bags.  That room is always locked because she doesn't want anyone to disturb any of his stuff in case he comes home."

I glared at him as he paused and nodded affirming the dark truth. When I got home I started to call them knowing if just one of them could talk to her, he would make her understand about the trauma that was paralyzing her, but Richard was in the hospital after being in a car accident, Alton joined a civil rights March, Jude was in a rehabilitation placement after falling off the wagon and getting arrested and Sammy was on the lam with some young girl he picked up in a truck stop in Bakersfield.  I did not know it then, but this would be my last attempt after all the promises I made to them when I was high.  I would be left to deal with mom on my own.  I would like to say i did well, but that would be a lie.  When i left for college, mom was admitted to a psychiatric hospital where a month into her admission, she managed to get on the roof of the dormitory and jumped to her death.

In June, 2000,  I was sent to Washington D.C. to speak at a symposium on traumatic brain injury since I had earned my doctorate in 1986 based on my dissertation as well as three books on the subject.  What an honor this was since there was a lot of consternation over the subject from the Veteran's Administration who still referred to it as Shell Shock.  

After I finished, the lights came up and I saw the crowd and in that crowd was a familiar shadow.  When I strained to see the shadow was gone.

The next day, before departing later in the afternoon, I took a walk on the Washington Mall and found the Vietnam Memorial Wall where all the names of the fallen had been listed.  One of the guides took me to where my brother's name was listed with the rest.  I put my hand on his name, closed my eyes and could clearly see his smiling face as he said, "Good work, Doug."  Opening my eyes his image had vanished, but I could still hear a voice calling me.

"Hey Little Brother." A man in a wheelchair called out, it was Jude.

I put my hand to my face to dam up the tears falling down my cheeks. I managed to say as I bent down to hug him, "What brings you here?"

"Same thing you're doing here." He answered. I sat on the bench near him and he told me Richard had passed away of heart failure and Alton was in a treatment community after attempting suicide for the sixth time while Sammy had been killed in a drunk driving accident where the other driver was inebrated which I found to be ironic, but still sad news. "Heard you are some big shot doctor."

"Not sure how big or what kind of shot.  What about You?" I asked, leaning toward him.  He sat back in his chair and smiled.

"I wasn't sure every step of the way, but I made it.  I am head counsellor at a clinic not far from here." He explained.

"What happened to Kentucky?" I asked.

"Had to get out, too many folks knew how I used to be and expected me to be the same, but I couldn't be that guy anymore." His eyes sparkled as he spoke.

It was like Alton told me, we are nothing but swan feathers falling from a swan with no ideas where we would land.