Carry Me Home (49 page)

“I—I’m dirty.”

“I’ll wash them later.”

“What if ...”

“You won’t drop them.”

Tony bent, smiled, laughed a small laugh, let the laugh be stifled by self-consciousness. Still he lifted Michelle. She grabbed his collar, looked at her mother. Gina grabbed Tony’s pant leg, pulled herself up to standing. Now Tony did smile.

“We’re suppose to be at your mother’s ...” Linda began.

“NO! Ah ... I can’t.”

“Um.” Linda said. “It’s Christmas, you know. The necklace and earrings are beautiful. Thank you.” Tony smiled sheepishly. “I have something for you, too,” Linda said. She took Michelle from him, handed him the small light box. Then she lifted Gina. “Go on. Open it.”

Tony peeled the tape back as Jo would have, so as not to damage the wrapping paper. In the box there was a slip of paper and on it were the words, “All My Love.”

O
NE RESULT OF VIET
Nam homecoming experiences was poor decision making. It was Bobby marrying Red; Ty getting involved with a fourteen-year-old; me not seeking help, losing Linda, Gina and Michelle. It was the inability to make overtly difficult decisions that might disappoint others and incur their rejection or wrath. And it was Watergate, Phnom Penh, El Salvador, Teheran, Beirut, Afghanistan, Iran-Contra.... The result hit more than individual returnees.

There is a system of cleansing that Bobby introduced us to. It’s not original; my brother John did it in Boy Scouts when he went for the Order of the Arrow. It’s much older than that, though. Native American lore contains accounts, as does the New Testament. Most famous of all is the Buddha’s long and extreme exercise. One eats as little as possible. Maybe sits in a sweat shed. Maybe bakes beneath the summer sun. Maybe walks across the desert. Maybe goes to a fire circle, alone, with only water.

Cleansing. I’ve grown to detest the word
healing.
It’s been overused, abused, mutated for political advantage. Same-same catharsis. Catharsis equals defecation—i.e., purging; the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable emotions, thoughts, beliefs. I’m not certain that
cleansing
is a better word. By it I do not mean to wash away but to elucidate via removing extraneous adjunct. Do not purge us of our past. The experience was not so much excrement. Purge, and the results will be additional poor decision making.

The night cleansing begins, the storms break. At first this is difficult. Blood sugar drops. You become depressive. Then your body adjusts. Soon it burns itself, burns fat, that tissue dumping, along with its stored energy,
toxicants
into the blood, to be used, to be filtered out by kidneys, liver, skin pores—whatever can handle it. What isn’t handled re-lodges somewhere else—kidneys, liver, brain, balls. Sometime the tissue—active tissue versus fat, which is inactive—can’t handle it and then the dioxins or the methyl ethyl ketones or the alkaloid known as cocaine, or the pesticides and herbicides, the fertilizers and PCBs and new car odor and alcohol and amphetamines and Elavils, they gunk up the cellular genetic mainframe computer and you end up with soft-tissue sarcomas or a plastic anemias, or your crazied goo fertilizes an egg and the fetus develops with multiple deformities.

Cleansing needs to be monitored. Six quarts of water need to be consumed daily to keep a constant flush going. One monitors quietly, looking inside, searching, sensing, feeling for toxicants lodging so that at that precise moment the condition can be controlled—a sugar cube ingested—wash, wash, wash. It is as much a mental discipline as a physical cleansing but one no Western scientist, no doctor, will recommend. But then too, they’ll tell you no one can read the wind. No one can reach back, expand the frame, the scope, seek enlightenment. What cleansing can not do is allow you, me, America, to return in time, return to remake, unmake, poor decisions.

Night-4. It kicks in with a vengeance. Tires me. I do not wish to talk. Exhausted. Both from lack of sustenance and from rising so often to pee. Yet it exhilarates me. Flying, light-headed. I rise slowly, move slowly, as quietly as possible. The night is dark—no moon, faint stars behind thin clouds, faint flickers of fireflies in the sugarbush. The storms of last week have passed leaving the hill dry, the brush and weeds brittle, the grasses golden, the pond-side rush and reed spotted brown. Bullfrogs belt out their mating calls, or so I imagine. Why else would they make such a racket? It’s still warm, I’d guess 80 degrees, humid, a dog-day night. I feel toxicants bursting from their holds, swishing within, coming to the surface, oozing from pores, coating my skin, attempting to reenter. Daily I wash at first light, at midlight, at last light. I creep to the pond on fingers and toes like a sapper. The exertion is tremendous and I sweat heavily. Then I slide between rushes and reeds into the water like an otter, or perhaps like an alligator. How I wish I could be the otter. All night I lie still, except to drink and to relieve myself; toxins swishing in the flood. These days are numbered. It is not evil to die.

Bobby was in a period when his lower head ruled. Our lives continued that descending sine-wave staircase, peak, valley, lower peak, lower valley, testing, tasting of the three temptations, all three now stamped with society’s approval or at least condonation, poor decisions or not, up down up down accelerating high, crashing without boundaries, without guidelines, totally free to fleece or fail. “You owe it to yourself, Boy!” “You’re worth it.” Passwords. Key phrases. Condonation by slogan. Morality by sound byte. Knowledge, analyses, understanding by psychobabble. Otters, it is not evil to play. Bullfrogs, it is not evil to fuck.

For months I meditated upon just that. And on Jimmy’s Harley, screaming to me in a wavelength one cannot hear but can feel, sense, a consciousness emanating from molecular vibrations one sensitizes to through practice, through meditation even if at the time I had no knowledge of meditation—sensitizes to nature, to the natural order which includes the life of mountains and meadows, motorcycles and mankind. It is not evil to die. Recognizing such alleviates the pain of living, frees one to recognize natural processes. That freedom is very different from the “freedoms” of the early seventies that imprisoned as much as the walls of Seven-upper, as much as that tiny cell where my face was bashed, as much as any poor decision. Poor decisions have a way of following you, of multiplying themselves.

S
AN MARTIN, CALIFORNIA, 29
April 1971—Bobby’s stomach bounced. The stairs were higher than he remembered. Josh loped lazily as if taunting him, Get the lead out, lard-butt. Five eleven, 208 pounds—thirty pounds heavier than at induction, sixty pounds more than when he’d DEROSed, sixty pounds in twenty-three months—208 on his twenty-fifth birthday and much of it heaving and dropping with each step and him thinking, vaguely, maybe I’ll catch a glimpse of Victoria, and, I don’t want to be seen by her looking like this, and how did I get so fat in the first place? Blump-blump-blump. Jiggly belly bounce.

Halfway up the stairs beside the lower dam he stopped, bent at the waist, panting. The morning was warm, the sun strong for not-yet-May. He could feel its rays penetrating his neck and shoulders. Josh crested the stairs, vanished. How quickly things had happened in the last six months. He’d barely taken a moment to reflect, had done little but work, eat, drink a few bottles of beer with each late dinner, then sleep, in bed, with Red facing her side of the room, he his. Nationally the economy was still slow but locally it was spurting. Locally there was money, a seemingly endless supply if one knew how to tap it, accelerating development, expansion, growth. Unemployment, foreclosures and bankruptcies were also high, yet those that had, spent. At Great Homes Realty sales were breaking records. Robert Janos Wapinski was making money.

He stared at the crest, glanced at the dry chutes, turned, looked down to the small lot, out to downtown where Bennett, Bennett and Bennett had broken ground for their new financial headquarters, a proposed eight-story edifice taking up the entire Miwok Road block between Second and Third streets, displacing Rheem’s Auto Parts and Fonari’s Deli and the half-dozen one- to three-bedroom flats above. Already BB&B’s steel work was at four stories and higher than any other structure in town, appearing to Bobby, with the morning sun on the far side, dull brown, even black. He thought of Dorsey. Crazy Ty Dorsey was trying to get his piece of the pie, too. Bobby had not seen him, had not talked to him since the day he’d left Bobby’s home on Deepwoods. But he’d heard dribs and drabs about him and had received one note without return address.

“It promises to be a colder winter than expected,” Ty had written.

I’ve got no plans right now as our real estate partnership proved to be but a pleasant mirage and my money is limited. I’ll be checking out the city for work suited to an ex-boonie rat.

I keep wondering why my insides twist up when I think of our splitting. Our attachment is shallow so there shouldn’t be no twisting. I’ve split from people I was with a lot longer. But captain, I guess my hopes was more embedded in our friendship then in any of those others. Tell Red I’m sorry if I messed up the house. I appreciate her helping me like she did. And you, captain, my thanks to you too. You helped me set my sights on a target I wouldn’t of even seen. Just being with you, captain, watching you think, watching you move, just like in the jungle—you know what I’m saying. I’m going to strive to be like you. Except for where you make people think they can’t measure up.

Peter Wilcox had let it slip—through Gloria Spencer, to Bobby—that Ty had purchased a piece of income property in San Martin’s old Riverside subdivision, using Peter and his creative financing, as agent both for purchasing and for finding tenants. Ty himself was living in a fleabag boarding hotel down on The Embarcadero in San Francisco.

Bobby began again. His thighs felt leaden. He paused, tried to whistle for Josh but was breathing too hard to control the sound. He pushed on to the top, crested, walked, attempting to catch his breath, barely seeing the water of The Res, barely noting the trees, seeing little except the short stretch of path directly before him. As his breathing settled he looked up, imagined again he was running with Victoria, imagined they took a side trail like Gold Mine out a dozen meters and into a glade. The thought was pleasant.

Bobby began jogging again. He did not move quickly but plodded, pounded like a ponderous stamping machine punching out cheap imprints of his heel bones. The sun seemed to intensify. Sweat, which had been seeping from his pores even before he’d hit the stairs, now cascaded from his brow, from his fat roll and love handles, streamed down his face, down his sides, soaking his old gray sweatshirt. Over his belly the cotton was black with sweat. Drive on! It had taken him an entire month to decide to begin exercising, he wasn’t going to quit before he reached the Upper Res and hippie camp. Aw, fuck it! He stopped the jog, walked, tried to catch his breath, placed his right hand on his chest over his heart, felt his ticker banging, felt the surges in his neck.

For four months he had bitten the bullet, kept an even keel, walked the straight and narrow—except on the Somner transaction where the financing had been a work of Mickey Mouse art worthy of Peter Wilcox at his best. With the sweat flowed irritability, bitchiness. Every fucking fiscal step forward was wiped away by Red’s habitual need to shop. Every cushion was whisked away. Not a single pleasure was permitted to ripen, to age before instant-gratification picking. Fuck it! He didn’t want to think about it. Jog, he ordered himself, jog to the upper steps.

From behind him turmoil erupted; Josh chasing a rabbit, the animals hurtling past him. He tried to speed up. Where at first he had not even seen his surroundings, now elements pulsated at him. Wooden stakes with red or blue numbered tops seemed to leap out. What are they going to build? he thought. Wish I could design it. He recalled an article in the paper suggesting a municipal golf course for those who didn’t belong to the country club. Green fees, the article suggested, would make it self-sustaining “as long as the cost of land acquisition and development isn’t capitalized.”

“Hm. And I’d be a millionaire,” Coleman had quipped at an office meeting, “if I could keep all my income and somebody else paid my bills.”

Bobby had wanted to add, I’d be rich if Red didn’t ... but he’d censored himself.

He passed the cascades and switchbacks of the upper San Antonio Creek, reached the base of the next staircase. On the first step he saw a bit of fur, on the second a few drops of blood, on the third more fur. He squatted, pinched a small clump between thumb and forefinger. His eyes narrowed. The fur evoked not Josh’s triumph but a poster he’d seen a month after—he did not know exactly, had kept an even keel, hadn’t made waves—a photograph showing the tips of an adult’s fingers holding two teeny legs, the bottom of two teeny feet with ten perfect toes facing out. The cutline read:
10 WEEKS: The structure of the human body is completely formed
.

Bobby flicked the fur from his fingers, wiped his fingertips on his sweat-soaked shirt. His quadriceps quivered. He whistled for Josh, lost his breath. Josh bumped him from behind. Bobby jerked. The dog too was panting. Bobby stroked his head. He couldn’t tell if Josh had caught the rabbit.

“C’mon ... Little Bro.” Bobby puffed. “Let’s go ... back. We’ll ... try again ... later.”

As they walked back thoughts leached from data banks to consciousness. Trapped. In his thoughts he spoke to Josh. Trapped, Little Brother. I wonder if she feels it too. I wonder if she’s trapped ... or screwing around.... Even in his mind he couldn’t admit to that. She’d written their wedding vows, designed and defined their relationship. “Robert, in entering with Beatrice into this marriage, will you honor the commitment to a new reality of joint decision? Will you respect Beatrice for who she is, and nurture her growth as she becomes the woman she wishes to be? Will you be faithful to her through changing climes, and trust her faithfulness to you?”