Curtis Bates squirmed in his favorite chair in the main lounge of the State Veterans Home in Norman, Oklahoma. He was one of the original residents of the Home, which opened its doors to sick and disabled veterans in 1992. Curtis was worried about his best friend Stanley Puller who was sitting across the aisle and listing further and further to the left, drooling down the side of his wheelchair.
"Heads up, Stanley," Curtis yelled. There was concern in his eyes, but anger in his voice. "You gonna rust ‘em out, fool, you keep slobbering all over them iron legs. You wanna wind up scootin across the floor on your ass, give the VA the satisfaction of saying they can't afford you no new chair? Is that what you want?"
Stanley had awoke with a start. His voice came raspy, his words slurred from overmedication. "You got no call yellin thataway at a man what's trying to sleep. You lucky it ain't no thirty year ago; I'd whup you shore as pudding, I would."
"You couldn't whup shit thirty years ago, Stanley. Airborne or no Airborne, you was nothin but a candy ass even then."
"I'll candyass yo'mama, you Jarhead mu'fuck."
Stanley's feeble attempt to rise out of his wheelchair failed miserably. Curtis started laughing. He rose up from his own seat, grabbed a handkerchief out his back pocket and stepped over to Stanley. Roughly, he wiped Stanley's face of smeared drool, and his nose of crusted snot, then stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. "Look at your sorry ass, nothing but Airborne disease."
Stanley grimaced up at his friend, eyes fluttering, began nodding back to sleep. His mouth dropped open, tongue between his lips. Curtis bent down and picked up Stanley's fallen veteran's cap, his pride and joy that his son had sent him more than a year ago, the one with miniature Purple Heart and Silver Star medals pinned to it, alongside a full-size Combat Infantry Badge. Curtis recalled the incident because it wasn't always Stanley's pride and joy. It was his first and only mail, yet Stanley had thrown the cap in the trash when it arrived.
"What are you doing, Stanley?" he had said.
"Sumbitch thinks he can just send me a stupid hat steada visiting. Hell, he lives right here in Norman, the son of a bitch, not two miles away."
"He'll come visit when he can, Stanley, you watch. Give him a call, why don't ya."
"When I'm laid in the dirt, he'll come, maybe. I ain't callin' no more. He says I ain't no father, just some no-good that fucked his mother. He says I wasn't there for him, so why the hell should he be here for me. Ah, maybe he's right, the little turd. Who gives a shit, anyway. I'd probably drop dead if he walked in the door."
Curtis had handed Stanley the cap. "Well, wear it anyway," he remembered saying, "show these bums here you're the real deal."
"These sumbitches wouldn't know the real deal if it slapped ‘em upside they heads. They's all talk and no walk, ever last one of ‘em."
Curtis thought about how he'd agreed. Most of the Home's residents were ex-military rear echelon types, the office clerks, truck drivers and service personnel. "Put the damn hat on," he'd said, "slap ‘em upside the head."
Stanley had put the hat on and straightened it. "I reckon gettin a hat from him's better'n nothin," he'd said.
Curtis wiped Stanley's face again, smoothed his hair and replaced the cap. Muttering his favorite song, he walked over to the window and stood staring out across the front lawn toward the distant lake named after J. G. Gaylord, former state governor turned land developer who donated the property for the Home. Out of resentment, some of the Home's residents, Curtis in particular, preferred calling it the Big Pond. It was a jab at the Home's World War II residents, most of whom served in the European Theater on the other side of the Big Pond, the Atlantic. But it was also their way of skirting complicity in what they saw as the misnaming of America's landmarks and, by extension, the mistreatment of its true heroes.
As spokesperson for the offended, Curtis had argued "This is our home, given by the people of Oklahoma. We earned it; we deserve it. Hell, some of us died for this country. Some of us are still dying for it, so draft dodgers like Gaylord can get richer. That lake shouldn't be named after nobody just because they've got a bunch of money. We should name it after one of our own, a fallen hero maybe or one of our Medal of Honorees. We could name after Stanley, here. Have any of you ever bothered to read his citation?"
But the argument had fallen on deaf ears, and Curtis could feel himself getting angry just thinking about it. Such issues were governed by politics, and the Home's political agenda was tightly manipulated and controlled by World War II Veterans who looked down upon the Vietnam Vets who nearly outnumbered them now. It was a question of time before the younger vets took over, not just in this Home, but in others across the nation, as well as in the veteran's major service organizations like the VFW and the American Legion.
The Korean War Vets sided with the WWII Vets, mostly because they were closer in age, but also because many had served in both wars. Each group saw the Vietnam Vets as losers, i.e., they had lost their war and were always carrying on about issues like Agent Orange and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The WWII Vets reasoned that PTSD had been around for centuries known as Shell Shock and other names, yet nobody cried about it; they just lived with the effects. And further, they reasoned, Atomic Radiation exposure during World War II preceded the Agent Orange problem, and nobody cried about that either. But mostly the issue boiled down to a matter of power, or more specifically the transition of power to the younger generation of veterans. The older vets had no intention of going quietly into the night, fading away as expected.
Curtis looked at his watch, then over at Stanley who was still sleeping, his head slumped nearly to his lap. He'd known Stanley more than four years. He remembered how they'd wheeled him into the Home a near basketcase, wracked with diabetes and stomach cancer. Rumor was he wouldn't last six months, but Curtis befriended him, cared for him, and Stanley had hung onto the kindness like a life preserver. But now Stanley had returned to death's door, had been knocking on it loudly for days. Curtis could smell it, same as in Vietnam, that unmistakable odor of decaying meat.
Quickly he stepped over to the nurses' station to check the visitor's schedule, see if anyone had made an appointment to visit Stanley, or himself for that matter. Curtis knew no one had, but the habit was compulsive, developed over several years. Something in his gut, hope maybe, told him that someday somebody would come visit.
Jennifer, a new nurse's aide had been watching him out the corner of her eye. She was scared, not of Curtis per se, but the Home itself, which seemed to her bloated with society's discarded angry and depressed men. There was something frightening, it seemed to her, that resonated in the air, a subtle warning not unlike that which comes from the buzzing of a high voltage electrical line. It made the hairs on the back of her neck bristle.
"Can I help you, Mr. Bates?"
"You can help Stanley," he snapped, "he's gonna die fore the day's out. You mark my words. Don't none a youse give a dang. Somebody should call his son."
Jennifer's eyes darted back and forth between Curtis and Stanley, then settled on Curtis. "He's just like always, Mr. Bates, but I'll get one of the nurses to check on him and give his son a call." She left the room, hurrying.
Curtis started muttering. "Sorry ass guvmint, send us to die and when we don't it upsets the game plan. It ain't like we's bottom feeders." He shouted this last part and slammed his palm down on the counter. He thought about running away, if not out the door, then at least in his imagination, just run away to places where he didn't have to deal with anyone or anything, especially death, and especially the associated pain and collateral damage that dying had on the living.
And he thought about going to the bathroom, but instead walked over to the front door and took the revolving exit. A couple of Korean War Vets in striped pajamas and blue robes milled around on the outdoor patio smoking cigarettes. One greeted him with a head nod but Curtis glared, ignoring him.
He crossed the patio and stepped out onto the lawn, meandered toward a clump of trees about fifty yards away and took a seat on the ground with his back to an old scrub oak. Two squirrels danced and chased one another in a patch of shaded bare ground to his right. A few yards in front of them, a blue jay chiseled at the rocky soil with its beak. Curtis threw a flat stone in their direction. "Go on," he yelled, "leave me in peace." The stone landed on its edge propped against a tiny mound of dirt. He stared at it, puzzled, his head cocked.
Curtis looked down at his wet, soiled pants and shook his head, set his jaw. He pulled out a cigarette and began daydreaming. He thought about his childhood, fleeting memories of playing in piled leaves with his mom and dad; and trudging through snow to the barn out back to visit his pet fawn rescued from a frozen pond. He thought about his high school days, about how happy he'd been then. Baseball -- he thought about how he'd loved baseball, and took momentary pride in how good he'd once played. He thought about how the fawn had died anyway.
And then came the war, the thought intrusions of that miserable disruption in his life, after which nothing had seemed normal. He thought about prostate cancer, and started singing to himself, mumbling softly, sadly, tears in his eyes.
"There was a time
When I was young,
Life was fun,
When I was young.
And there's a time
When one is old,
Life is cold,
When one is old."
Curtis rose up, stumbled back against the tree, then pushed himself off in the direction of the Big Pond, marching to the tune of his own song. He flicked the cigarette butt into the dirt. Up ahead, he could see Wild Willie Tootle sitting cross legged and fishing off the end of the dock. Wild Willie twisted around with a start when he heard Curtis approaching from the rear. "Go away," he snarled, "this is my pond."
"I ain't going nowhere," said Curtis, "cept out there in the middle of Lake Puller." He resumed singing and proceeded to march into the water.
Wild Willie looked at him and started laughing. "You crazy as a hoot owl, you know that? Lake Puller my ass! You come on outta there fore you hurt yourself."
"Fuck you," said Curtis.
"Fuck your own damn self. Come on outta there, you disrupin my pond, scarin my fish."
Curtis marched on out over his head and disappeared. Wild Willie jolted to his feet as best he could and looked around for help. There wasn't any. Suddenly his fishing pole started jerking up and down. He snatched at the pole, reeling fast. Bubbles hit the surface where Curtis had gone under. Wild Willie stared at the bubbles, an odd look on his face, then back at his line. He kept reeling. More bubbles surfaced. He kept reeling, and up popped a small catfish. More bubbles, too.
Wild Willie reeled in the fish and left it hooked to the line. There didn't seem to be anymore bubbles then, so he picked up his gear and headed toward the Home with the pole up over his shoulder and the fish flopping behind. He entered the lobby at the tail end of considerable commotion. Paramedics, scurrying around Stanley, were trying to revive him. Jennifer stood out of the way looking horrified, her hand covering her open mouth. Stanley's son knelt beside him, lips pursed, not a tear in his eyes.
"There's nothing else to do -- he's dead," said a paramedic.
Jennifer spun around. "Where's Mr. Bates? Somebody go get Mr. Bates."
Wild Willie spoke loudly. "Most likely he's done drowned hisself out in Lake Gaylord. I seen him walk outs yonder and not come up." He thrust his jaw toward the paramedics. "Now that you all done here, you might go check on him."
The paramedics looked puzzled. Jennifer stared at him. "What are you talking about, Mr. Tootle?"
"Just like I said, I seen Bates walk out into Lake Gaylord and not come up. He seemed determined."
"Didn't you say nothing to him?"
"Well sure I did. I told him to go away, and I told him to come on outta there fore he hurt hisself, but he walked on out into that water anyway, clear up over his head."
The hairs on the back of Jennifer's neck bristled. "God's sake, Mr. Tootle, why didn't you do something?"
"I'm telling y'all ain't I? Besides, this here fish was a chompin on my line. By the time I got it dealt with, there weren't no more bubbles coming up. Like I tole you, he seemed determined. Funny thing was, he kept calling it Lake Puller and was marching all outta step to that stupid ass song he always singin."
Terry P. Rizzuti joined the Marine Corps in 1966 and served a tour in the northern I-Corps area of South Vietnam. He was awarded the Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds received in 1967.
Rizzuti graduated with an English Literature degree from the University of Oklahoma (OU) in 1977. He completed two years of graduate-level literature studies, worked in various OU positions, and now serves on the executive board for OU's Vietnam Memorial Scholarship Association.
Currently, Rizzuti is a writer living in Norman, Oklahoma. He has been previously published in War, Literature & the Arts, as well as by Greenwood Press.
Comments (closed)
morgan mcfinn
2011-11-06 19:48:39
This is a maudlin, though provocative, story. I never served in the military...I know nothing about combat. Still, when I read a piece like this, I wonder if those killed in action weren't better off than many of those who survived. What is the greater casualty of war...broken bodies or broken spirits?
Think Funny & Keep Smilin', pal.