Bloods (39 page)

But this captain said no.

So we had what they call penlight flare. You had them big bullfrogs over there with the big warts. I took one of those penlight flares and stuck it up the frog’s anus, went in the captain’s office, and fired it at him.

I had a little farm, with some chickens and a cow. And a Puerto Rican buddy of mine, lived in New Jersey, was going home.

I told him, “Man, when you get ready to leave, I’m gon’ kill these chickens, gon’ kill this cow. We gon’ have the biggest barbecue these people ever seen.”

It comes to the day when it’s time for him to go home. I goes out, gatherin’ up the chickens. We gon’ cut the chickens’ heads off and have barbecue chicken.

So this same captain came up to me. He stared at me. I had this chicken in my hand.

He said, “Don’t cut that chicken up.”

He wants it saved for the eggs, I guess.

“You cut that chicken’s head off, I’m a have you court-martialed.”

I bent over, and I bit the chicken head off and spit it in his face. And he throwed up.

My discipline was something to talk about. But a lot of people felt in the unit that I was the best Ranger in the company. When we went to the field, we were soldiers. When we got out of the field, we was crazy. And we was crazy together.

So they sent me back before the promotion board, and this black sergeant happened to be a part of it. I had more respect from the people in the unit than he did. He wouldn’t go near the field. Shit. Anything with the word F he wouldn’t fuck with. He was a certified ass. He did his best to keep me from gettin’ promoted, but they gave me E-5 anyway.

Well, I happened to be downtown in the whorehouse, when they called formation. I went back all drunk. They had just dismissed the formation, when me and a buddy drove up in a jeep. They called the formation again. The sergeant called me, gave me my orders for E-5, and I went back in the ranks. He called us back to attention, called me back out, and took it from me. We had this personal thing.

So on his birthday, which was three days later, he was havin’ all the officers in his barracks. They was partyin’. Music was playin’. Me and some friends of mine got a M-79 grenade launcher, got behind some sandbags, and we M-79ed his birthday party.

A couple of people got hurt. The sergeant didn’t get touched. They thought it was incomin’. They had the whole goddamn place on alert. Everybody runnin’ around tryin’ to get their weapons. And we just went and got drunk.

I think the captain and the sergeant was afraid of me.

I left Vietnam the end of ’69. I flew from An Khe to Cam Ranh Bay, still in my jungle fatigues. I hadn’t bathed in six months. I had a full-grown beard. My hair was so matted against my head I couldn’t pull my fingers through it. I smelled like a cockroach on Christmas. Like Mount Rushmore in the springtime. I was funky. I was really funky.

Then they put me in this big fabulous airplane. I’m sittin’ there with filth all over me. From my head to my toe. I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.

We landed in California when it was dark. We were taken to some barracks. We took a shower, and they gave us some new clothes and a steak dinner. Then I got on another plane.

The same day I left Vietnam, I was standin’ back on the corner in Baltimore. Back in the States. A animal. And nobody could deal with me.

I went home. I banged on the door. About four o’clock in the morning. I’m hollerin’, screamin’ in the middle of the street.

“Wake up, you motherfuckers. Get out of there. I’m home. Shit.”

There wasn’t nobody there.

I went and found my grandparents, and they told me my parents had moved a month before and where to find them.

When I got there, my mother wouldn’t even open the door. She didn’t even recognize me.

I started rappin’ to her, tellin’ her I was her son. And she finally let me in.

It took her a long time to adjust to who I had changed to be. She had heard so much negative rumors about Vietnam vets bein’ crazy. She was afraid of me.

Before I got out the service, the My Lai stuff came out in the papers. Some of who had been in similar incidents in combat units felt that we were next. We were afraid that we were gonna be the next ones that was gonna be court-martialed or called upon to testify against someone or against themselves. A lot of us wiped out whole villages. We didn’t put ’em in a ditch per se, but when you dead, you dead. If you kill 30 people and somebody else kills 29, and they happen to be in a ditch and the other
30 happen to be on top, whose guilty of the biggest atrocity? So all of us were scared. I was scared for a long time.

I got out January ’71. Honorable discharge. Five Bronze Stars for valor.

I couldn’t deal with goin’ to school, because I wasn’t motivated. The only friends I made were militant types, because they were the only ones could relate to what I was tryin’ to say. I took all the money I saved up and bought weapons. Fifteen-hundred dollars’ worth. Rifles, guns. I joined the Black Panthers group basically because it was a warlike group. With the Panthers we started givin’ out free milk and other community help things. But I was thinkin’ we needed a revolution. A physical revolution. And I was thinkin’ about Vietnam. All the time.

I could never have a permanent-type relationship with a lady. It was always sporadic-type relationships. They couldn’t understand what I was goin’ through when the flashbacks started. Tryin’ to talk to them, they wouldn’t wanna hear it. Didn’t want to hear no gross war stories. Hear about dead people. I just couldn’t translate my feelings to a lady.

I couldn’t discuss the war with my father even though he had two tours in Vietnam and was stationed in the Mekong Delta when I was there. He was a staff sergeant. A lifer. Truck driver. Jeep driver or somethin’. In a support unit with the 9th Division. I couldn’t come to terms with him being in a noncombat unit. He died three years ago. He was forty-five. He had a disease he caught from the service called alcoholism. He died of alcoholism. And we never talked about Vietnam.

But my moms, she brought me back ’cause she loved me. And I think because I loved her. She kept reminding me what type of person I was before I left. Of the dreams I had promised her before I left. To help her buy a home and make sure that we was secure in life.

And she made me see the faces again. See Vietnam. See the incidents. She made me really get ashamed of myself for doin’ the things I had done. You think no crime is a crime durin’ war, ’specially when you get away with it. And when she made me look back at it, it just didn’t seem it was possible for me to be able to do those things
to other people, because I value life. That’s what moms and grandmoms taught me as a child.

I’ve had a lotta different, short-lived jobs since I been back. I’ve been into drug counseling in Baltimore City Hospital. Worked in the children’s clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital. In welfare rights as a community organizer. Always human service work.

I don’t have a job now. But I would take any human service job, especially where I could show the black kids and the black people that we ought to stop looking toward the stars and start looking toward each other. That our greatest horizons is in our children. And if we don’t bring our children up to believe in themselves, then we’ll never have anything to believe in.

But they turn their backs on a lot of us Vietnam vet’rans. They say the only way to success is through education. I wanna go back to school and get my B.A., but I can’t afford to. I gotta get out there and get a job. Ain’t no jobs out there. So what I’m gon’ do now? Only thing else I know how to do is pick up a gun. Then I’m stupid. I’m being stupid again. I’m not going forward. I’m going backwards. And can’t go any further backwards. I done been so damn far back, I’m listenin’ to the echoes in the tunnel.

One day I’m down on Oliver and Milton Avenue. Go in this grocery store. In my neighborhood.

This Vietn’ese owns the store.

He say, “I know you?”

I say, “You know me from where?”

“You Vietnam?”

“Yeah, I was in Vietnam.”

“When you Vietnam.”

“ ’68, ’69.”

“Yeah, me know you. An Khe. You be An Khe?”

“Yeah, I was in An Khe.”

“Yeah, me know you. You Montagnard Man.”

Ain’t that some shit?

I’m buyin’ groceries from him.

I ain’t been in the store since. I’m still pissed off.

He’s got a business, good home, drivin’ cars. And I’m still strugglin’.

I’m not angry ’cause he Vietn’ese. I don’t have
anything against the Vietn’ese. Nothin’. Not a damn thing. I’m angry with America. When the Vietn’ese first came here, they were talkin’ ’bout the new niggers. But they don’t treat them like niggers. They treat them like people. If they had gave me some money to start my life over again, I’d been in a hell of a better situation than I am right now. We went to war to serve the country in what we thought was its best interest. Then America puts them above us. It’s a crime. It’s a crime against us.

Me and some vet’rans started what we call Base Camp One. We met at this church. It’s to bring the comradeship that we had in the service into civilian life. To get a positive foundation to grow on. Because we feel that we are still in a combat situation.

We talk about the old enemy. The war. Our lives. The ghosts. The nightmares.

We didn’t gain no respect for the Viet Cong until after we got into combat and found out that we had millions of dollars worth of equipment which s’posed to be advanced and so technical, and they were fighting us with whatever was available or whatever they could steal. I don’t think we were well trained enough for that type of guerrilla warfare. But we were better soldiers, better equipped. And we had the technology.

In fact, we had the war beat until they started this pacification program. Don’t shoot, unless shot upon. The government kept handicapping us one way or ’nother. I don’t think America lost. I think they gave up. They surrendered.

And this country befell upon us one big atrocity. It lied. They had us naïve, young, dumb-ass niggers believin’ that this war was for democracy and independence. It was fought for money. All those big corporations made billions on the war, and then America left.

I can’t speak for other minorities, but living in America in the eighties is a war for survival among black folks. And black vet’rans are being overlooked more than everybody. We can’t find jobs, because nobody trusts us. Because we killers. We crazy. We went away intelligent young men to do the job of American citizens. And once we did, we came back victims.

Sometimes I’m walkin’ on the street. I see Kenneth
McKnight. I see Cook, James Cook. Brothers I knew in west Baltimore, in D.C.

One time I saw Kenneth on this corner. When I got there, he had turned down the street and was not there.

Another time I saw James on the other side of the street.

I called ’im, “James. Wait for me, man.”

When I got over there, he was gone.

I ask this guy, “Did you see a brother standing right here?”

“No, man.”

I still cry.

I still cry for the white brother that was staked out.

I still cry because I’m destined to suffer the knowledge that I have taken someone else’s life not in a combat situation.

I think I suffered just as much as he did. And still do. I think at times that he’s the winner, not the loser.

I still have the nightmare twelve years later. And I will have the nightmare twelve years from now. Because I don’t wanna forget. I don’t think I should. I think that I made it back here and am able to sit here and talk because he died for me. And I’m livin’ for him.

I still have the nightmare. I still cry.

I see me in the nightmare. I see me staked out. I see me in the circumstances where I have to be man enough to ask someone to end my suffering as he did.

I can’t see the face of the person pointing the gun.

I ask him to pull the trigger. I ask him over and over.

He won’t pull the trigger.

I wake up.

Every time.

I didn’t see the ugly part of the war. I enjoyed the war ’cause I was at Cam Ranh Bay. Cam Ranh Bay was paradise, man. I would say, Boy, if I got some money together, I’d stay right here and live. I wasn’t even gon’ come back to the United States. I was treated like a king over there. It was no war.

Cam Ranh Bay was the inland R & R spot. That’s where the battle-weary people was supposed to come to have R & R in country. They could get everything.

And it was so beautiful, pretty country. Beautiful coral reef. And the sand. Miles of perfect white sand. And the white boys could surf all they wanted. Boy, they had their fun.

We had movies about twice a week. The EM club was open from like eleven o’clock to about ten every day. It had live shows two, three times in a week. USO would come through all the time, too.

The Army had it good; the Air Force, better. We had
it the greatest, the Navy. We had hot and cold running water. Air conditioning. The Navy always had great food, but this base was somethin’ else. The Vietnamese did all the cooking, and the blacks supervised the cooking. And we ate like kings. Lobster, steak, everything. I must have gained 40 pounds.