Last Man Out (34 page)

Driving south, I listened to country-and-western music and occasionally sang, “Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina, in the morn … ing,” but the tune was melancholy that night. I didn’t have much to look forward to. The orders at the mill were good only through January, I was out of touch with most of my friends, the girls I dated in the Carolinas were of no interest, and a return to college was a difficult proposition.

I would have liked just to turn the car west and find my place in life by chance, if it weren’t for Dad and Mom. Dad was overwhelmed by the mill, but he wouldn’t just walk away from his investment. He needed help.

With the dark winter highway stretching out ahead, I felt very much alone in the little two-seater. I was twenty-five years old, maybe time to take stock. Two years of college, Army, no conspicuous talents or well-placed friends. I was getting beyond that point where I could rationalize that I was still growing up, kicking around. Shouldn’t I be seeking a stable course, looking for a place to settle down? What to do?

Looking back on Vietnam, I liked the dangers and I missed the patrols, the comradeship, and leading men into combat. For a fleeting moment I wanted to be back in the jungle with my platoon. I remembered the rush of adrenaline when a round zinged overhead and how I crouched, all senses alert, when a sudden exchange of gunfire erupted nearby. That was my element, I thought. Great risks, great rewards.

Not necessarily what I had at hand. There wasn’t much of a future with the mill. When the mill had run its course, I would move on. I had liked Havana, Monte Carlo, and Bangkok. Maybe I’d head to Thailand and look for work. Something would turn up.

By midday on Christmas Eve I was back in Sanford. I stopped at the mill to ensure that steam was up in the boiler before heading to Southern Pines, thirty miles away. After leaving the mill I stopped at Lee Drug Store on Main Street, the only store open. I hadn’t bought any presents for my parents or sisters. The day was dreary, cold, and wet, and I was tired.

A lanky, very attractive girl with a warm smile waited on me. She was soft-spoken and had a wholesome manner. She started working in the drugstore when she was in high school, she said. Now that she was living in Raleigh, North Carolina, she returned to work in the store every Christmas. It was part of her holidays. I tried to make eye contact as I described my parents and sisters, and asked her to suggest presents for them. She acted flustered; I wasn’t sure why, but she did not lose her smile. As she gathered things from around the store, she explained why she thought that each one would be a great gift. I told her I had to write a check for my purchases because I didn’t carry much cash. I was trying to maintain eye contact. It had been a long night on that lonely highway. She was such a welcome, uplifting change. She was so fresh and beautiful.

After scanning my check, she asked me to have it approved by the owner in the back. He initialed the check and I returned to the counter. The girl smiled and asked to be excused for a moment. She was very sweet.

She went back to the owner. “Mr. Joe,” she said, “see that guy up by the cash register? Did you just approve this check of his?”

Mr. Lazarus, a portly, balding, gentle man, looked at it briefly and said, “Yep.”

“I’m not so sure it’s a good check. I’ve never seen this guy before. Said he just drove down from New York City but works here in Sanford at a mill. Acts like he’s God’s gift to women.”

“He looks okay. It’s all right,” he said and went back to work.

The girl came back, smiled sweetly, and asked if she could gift-wrap the presents. I said of course, and we chatted as she wrapped them. She told me her name was Brenda Joyce Denton and reluctantly gave me her telephone number.

As she helped me take the gifts to the car, she noticed that I had a Carmel, California, city tag on the front bumper. “California,” she said. “You do get around, don’t you?”

I held her hand and told her how much I appreciated her help. I kissed her lightly on the cheek, for Christmas, and left for Southern Pines. For all that was going on—coming home so many miles through the night, the mill, the holidays, Lenore, New York, my future—that lanky, sincere girl in the drugstore was suddenly a major consideration, and I smiled.

Back in the store, Brenda quickly walked to the pharmacy in the rear and stood beside Mr. Lazarus. When she saw my car turn the corner, she said, “Mr. Joe, I have been working here for several years and I have had my share of bad checks and I know that guy is a con man. He didn’t fool me. He’s got charm he can turn on just like that. New York and, and, listen to this, his car is a white convertible sports car, with California tags. California. In Sanford, North Carolina? Works at a mill? No. That check is going to bounce. Yes, sir, he’s a crook. I can tell. It was the way he smiled, like a carnival barker. He’s as shady a character as I have ever met.”

Brenda Joyce Denton accepted my proposal of marriage on Valentine’s Day, fifty days after we met.

The mill continued to do poorly. With our old equipment we had no reason to hope for a reversal of fortunes in an industry that was becoming fully automated. Our principal customers began to cut back on orders, and it was becoming a problem to make the payroll.

Brenda noticed that Daddy was struggling under the load. If there was no hope of things getting better, she reasoned, we should cut our losses, close up the mill, and go on to something else. She suggested that I go back to school, that we could make ends meet after we got married. I qualified for the GI Bill, and she could get a job in Chapel Hill or we could live near Raleigh. The bright side was always clear to Brenda. She had an uncommonly clear sense of direction and vision.

I talked about going to Central America and she would say, “Okay,” and I’d say, “You want to go?” and she’d say, “Sure, I just said okay.” Then I would say, “We’d have an exciting time and a better opportunity to make a future for ourselves than here, you know?”

“Yes, I bet so. We’ll have so much fun.”

Then somehow—she wasn’t leading me, I don’t think—I don’t know how, but we would get back to the subject of UNC and I’d be talking about going back to school. She’d say, “We’ll rent an apartment, and you can read to me, and I’ll help with your studies, I will. I’m so excited.”

After a late-night discussion with Mother, Dad also came to the conclusion that there was no hope of keeping the mill going. On April 1, 1968, we shut down. We let the fire in the boiler die out for the first time in decades, laid off the workers, and locked the gate.

Admission officials at the University of North Carolina said I could return to Chapel Hill in the fall if I made up my grades during the summer sessions. I signed up for summer school and paid my tuition.

One Friday night on the way to see Brenda in Raleigh, the Mercedes overheated. I was late and anxious to get back on the road. When I filled the radiator with cold water, I heard the engine block crack and the sound of steaming water running onto the ground. My car died like a tiger, hissing and blowing as though it were angry because I was more concerned about someone else.

It was probably best. A Mercedes convertible was not the car for a struggling college couple. Plus, it held too many memories of a different time. I sold it to a collector for five hundred dollars and watched sadly as a wrecker pulled it away. That car had soul and personality. Men are seldom so well served by their machines.

Cool Springs Baptist Church was filled to capacity for the wedding. Dad was my best man. Brenda’s oldest sister Betty Jo was maid of honor.

We honeymooned at Hilton Head, South Carolina. With part of the money we received from Mom and Dad as a wedding present, we bought a trailer and had it moved to a trailer park south of the Chapel Hill campus. It was my idea, and Brenda said having our own place was a good way to start. We enjoyed choosing colors and accessories, the way young people in love take pleasure in doing these things.

Brenda obtained a job in the Education Department at UNC and began work as I started the first session of summer school. We drove to the campus together every morning. Down the road in the other direction from campus was a large chicken farm, and
trucks loaded with crates of chickens came past our trailer park every night to catch the interstate near Chapel Hill. Occasionally some chickens got out of broken crates and fell to the road. We saw bloody chicken carcasses along the road every day as we drove to school.

One morning Brenda remarked about how gory the scene was, like driving through Gettysburg the day after the battle. I said the real problem was with the chickens that got away, and then in my most sincere voice proceeded to tell her the story of “Redleg.”

“Those on the side of the road are dead and gone,” I said, “but some chickens survive the jump. There’s a herd of the wild chickens now, west of the road, deep in Chatham County. Grow to be three-and-a-half, four feet tall. Leader of the pack is called Redleg, must weigh thirty-five, forty-five pounds. Three times as big as the biggest turkey there ever was. He and some of the chickens in his pack killed a goat down near Pittsboro a couple of weeks ago. Pecked the goat to death. Wild chickens of Chatham County.”

Brenda was looking out the window at the carcasses as we passed. She had a frightful look on her face.

It wasn’t nice to exploit the trust of a loved one, but I smiled to myself. Like Pete and the insurance years before—sometimes I am not a nice person.

I pulled in $125 a month under the GI Bill, and Brenda made little more than $100 a week. At the end of the first month I figured how much we needed to pay for tuition and books, and how much to put aside for gas, food, mortgage for the trailer, and a Christmas fund. We had something like $13.50 to last the rest of the month. Brenda said that would be enough, and it was. We met others on the GI Bill and had BYOS—bring-your-own-steak—parties, although it sometimes turned out to be chicken.

“Road kill!” we all yelled.

Classes, mostly political science, were exhilarating, challenging, interesting. I enjoyed going to the library and doing extra reading. I made all A’s during the summer. It would have been difficult to go to Brenda, who was working to send me through school, and explain anything less than good grades. She wanted her money’s worth.

We were getting gas in the car one day on our way home when
Brenda saw a box filled with small puppies at the side of the service station. The lady behind the cash register said we could have one, they were free. Some were furry, some had short hair; some were larger than others. The lady said it was the damnedest litter she had ever seen, looked like there were three or four different daddies. Brenda picked out one of the small furry males and we headed home to the trailer. Getting a little puppy was just right for our situation.

I had been talking about former President Harry Truman’s famous 1951 confrontation with Gen. Douglas MacArthur over the Korean War when we pulled into the service station. We decided to name the pup “Harry.”

He peed on the floor for a few days before getting the message that even a small puppy was expected to do his business in the woods, where the Wild Chickens of Chatham County lived.

While I studied at night, Brenda and Harry played on the floor and on the bed and in the backyard. The dog slept on the foot of the bed at night. At first light he woke Brenda, and she would take him to the sliding glass door in back and let him out. She left the door ajar for him, then returned to bed for another thirty minutes or so of sleep.

One morning Harry returned with a farm dog friend that had been rolling in cow manure. The smell prompted Brenda to wake up. Within three inches of her face as she opened her eyes, a huge, black, smelly dog was looking at her. She screamed and, using her elbows, the back of her heels, and her butt muscles, shot toward the ceiling and landed on the other side of me.

What was happening? My wife was screaming, and at least two animals were spinning in place, their feet trying to get traction on the linoleum floor. A helluva racket.

For a second I was sure that ol’ Redleg and his Chatham County Wild Chickens had gotten in and were coming after us.

On my way to class one morning I was walking past the administrative buildings where the resident war protesters usually congregated. A pimple-faced youngster was dragging the American flag behind him at the rear of a demonstration.

I had stood, bemused, on the edge of campus demonstrations before as protesting students marched around in tight circles and
chanted such things as “Hell, no, we won’t go,” and “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh.” It was street theater, I thought. I considered the U.S. government policies in Vietnam well-intended—they obviously weren’t popular—but our government had served us well over the years, and we went to South Vietnam to stop that country from being overrun by its neighbor to the north. A noble endeavor, and I felt no regret for my part in it.

Why, I wondered, do these youngsters take such issue with the war? Probably because it was all the rage across the country. It was very hip to be antiwar. As a popular song of the times proclaimed, this was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and moral outrage with our traditional culture and our government was acceptable. Plus the youngsters did not have a vested interest in our society, and that encouraged alternative lifestyles. I had taken a vow once to uphold the dignity of our country, so, only five or six years older than these Carolina protesters, I felt like I had come from another age. Like an old codger, I would stand, watch, and smile.

But, to my mind, that young man who was dragging the American flag went beyond hip Age of Aquarius free expression. To me, the red of that flag represents the blood shed by my friends in Vietnam. That kid dragging it on the street denigrated their noble sacrifices. Ahead of him other students were cheering “Ho Chi Minh.” Without thinking I yelled out, “Hey Shithead!” and the boy turned in my direction. He had a smirk on his face.

I dropped my books and charged after him. He bolted away, collecting the flag as he went. I followed him, but he was too far ahead. I lost him in the crowd. Standing in the middle of the demonstration, with my fists balled up, wearing my old fatigue jacket, angry—indistinguishable from those around me—I shouted profanities, which added to the hue and cry of the crowd. People near me were supportive until they saw the look in my eyes, and then they moved away. When I stopped yelling and walked back to my books, the crowd was quieter than before.