Authors: John M. Del Vecchio
“That’s it then, huh?” Sherrick had expected resistance.
“Yeah, Gary. There’s no locks. You know that. You really are a manipulator.”
“I thought you didn’t put that in the files.”
“I don’t.” Wapinski turned back to the forge. “Doesn’t mean I didn’t see it, though.”
“I’ll pay you for what I took. What I used. I’ll send it to you.”
“No you won’t, Gary.”
Sherrick huffed.
Wapinski added, “You’re a smart man. You’re probably the smartest guy here. But you can’t hack it. Forget us. Forget what we’re building here. Take the easy way out.”
“Easy way, my ass! Not one of these idiots here gives a rat’s ass about me and I don’t give a rat’s ass about them. I’ll show you. All of you.”
Wapinski smiled. Didn’t answer. Measured the depth of the firebox.
“I’ll show you,” Sherrick repeated.
“Naw, Gary.” Wapinski was very slow, very calm. “You’d have to buck us to do that and no one’s got the energy to buck the brotherhood. We can easily out-flank and outmaneuver you. And that’s just what we’re doing. We’re manipulators, too. See, Gary, whether these guys give a damn about you or not, they give a damn about the brotherhood. You’ll learn. You’re part of it.”
“Well goddamn it then—” Sherrick spun agitated, his arms flailed comically, “then take me. Take me to your goddamned fire circle. I’ll—I’ll—I’ll tell you why ... but just you ... why I can’t accept this shit.”
Wapinski eyed him, bit his lip, attempted to gauge Sherrick’s sincerity. “Why you choose not to accept this shit?”
“It’s not my choice. They—I’m—they made me ...”
“Uh-huh.” Wapinski shook his head, turned back to the forge. “When you hit bottom, come back. Things don’t stop when you’re on the bottom. Life goes on. When you get there, when you understand that, come on back. We’ll start climbing back up together.”
“Shit! What do I have to say?”
“Can you stay like you are?”
“NO!”
“Do you need to work hard to change?”
“Yes.”
“Are you capable of changing?”
“Sure.”
“Are you trying to change?”
“Ye ... No.”
“Why not?”
“Cause I’m stuck here!”
“And?”
“And”—Sherrick was frantic—“and ...”
“And?”
“And I can’t stay like this!”
“What?”
“I can’t stay like this!”
“Um.” Slowly, then terse, fast, “Okay. We move out in one five. You know the routine. Get the rucks. I gotta change.”
It was the same scene, the fire circle, late late night. Only it was Sherrick, not Pisano. And the weather was warm.
“What really gets me, Man, is—is—I—I think I knew ... I think I suspected even while it was happening, I think maybe a second before I opened up ... Maybe long ...”
Bobby didn’t say anything. Sherrick held the truth stick. Earlier, at the Pennamite Camp, Sherrick had reentrenched. He was a tough nut to crack. Once across the gap and through the cathedral his anxieties abated. No one had sent him to his death. Bobby talked to him about eating right, sleeping right, standing right. “Decide. Develop a cause, a reason to become intense. To be cool is uncool. To be uncool is cool. Get hot, Gary.” Bobby pushed on. “Experiment with yourself. Learn your triggers. Use them. Practice switching to confident, to interested, to sensitive. Practice getting into the posture where you care about people, about things, where you care about quality work. Let your physical self lead your brain.”
Sherrick took it as a challenge, not to meet, to surmount, but to resist. “Quality work?” Sherrick laughed. “To me that crap’s got no value. I don’t care about solar panels. And farming stinks.”
“What’s your mission, Gary?” Wapinski refused to let up. “Unless you desire excellence,” he said, “you’ll miss your target. Unless you are on a mission, driven by a cause, you will be outgunned, outmanned, overrun and left on the triage pile of humanity. You’ll be left in the corner to cool.”
Sherrick snickered. “Personal growth bullshit, huh? You Californians ...”
Wapinski cut in. “You’re not an inert object. People grow. You’re right. A lot of that movement is pabulum for the masses, the ticket to fame and fortune for the high priests and practitioners. But there are core insights. No one, no matter how stuck, is completely static. Everyone changes. You get older, fatter, more reclusive, or maybe more widely read, more accepting, a better decision maker. The things to understand”—Wapinski held up a fist, extended a finger with each point—“there’s constant change even if one is stuck in one compartment of his life, and to some extent one can direct that change. Change doesn’t necessarily destroy the foundation you’re built on. It might realign the blocks, reinforce one wing, change a facade, deepen a well, install a more sensitive perceptual system or rewire the rooms for better lighting.”
“Man,” Sherrick lay back in the lean-to. “You’re a real piece of work. Change everybody. Change the past.” He pointed at Wapinski. “That’s why you believe the way you do. You’re a revisionist. All you’re trying to do is clone yourself. That’s the problem with guys like you. You want to revise personal histories just like you want to revise the war. The thing happened, mister. Motherfuck, I can’t believe I came out here!”
Through the afternoon, into the early evening, the tit-for-tat continued. “If you make a mistake on a collector plate,” Wapinski said, “take it apart and redo it. Quality counts. If you make a mistake in your life, take it apart and reassemble it. Quality counts.”
“Revisionism.” Sherrick spat.
Wap continued. “If you won’t do it for yourself because you need to be punished, do it for the brotherhood. They need you. I need you. You once pulled your weight ...”
“Revision ...” Sherrick twitched. “I don’t need to be punished!”
“Change your focus, Gary.”
“God bless you, Man.”
“You can smell the fertilizer or you can smell the grapes, Gary. What you focus on is what you get.”
“Fertilizer, huh?” Sherrick laughed.
“How you act, Gary, is determined by how you feel. And how you feel, Gary, is determined by what you think about and what you sense. What you sense is determined by what you’re looking for. Fertilizer or grapes.”
“What I think about! I think about booze. I think, ‘Why can’t I stay on the wagon when I’m away from a shithole like this?’ Aren’t you gonna say it? ‘Gary,’”—Sherrick threw his voice into a screechy falsetto—“‘you’ve got so much going for you, why can’t you stay sober?’” His voice reverted. “Because I don’t fuckin want to. I don’t give a shit.”
“I never asked you that,” Wapinski said.
“So what?” Sherrick shot back. “You wanted to. You all wanted to.”
“How can you stay sober and enjoy it?” Wapinski asked. Sherrick stared at him. Wapinski repeated the question.
“All I gotta do is want to.” Sherrick sighed. “I thought you weren’t going to ask that.”
“Ask what?”
“Why I can’t stay sober?”
“I didn’t. I asked, How can you stay sober and enjoy it? If you ask your question, you’ll come up with an answer. If you ask mine, you will too.” Wapinski sat up. It was almost dark. “I gotta git,” he said. “Think about when you were most happy. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Sherrick started. “Whatda ya mean?”
Wapinski was already out of the lean-to.
“I aint stayin here by ...” He poked out. Wapinski was gone.
At first Sherrick thought it was a joke, but night descended. The mosquitos came. And the chirpings, creakings, croakings, buzzings. Sherrick broke into a sweat. He hated being in the woods, alone, without a light, without a weapon, without a pilot, copilot, crew chief. He didn’t want to stay. He didn’t dare leave. He cursed. He damned Wapinski to hell for all eternity. He inched to the back of the small shelter, crouched, wrapped his arms about his legs, rocked quietly. His nares flared at every noise. His ears strained. The night could not have been darker. When was I happy? The thought simply leaped in. In school, his mind answered him. Maybe in the courtroom in law school classes. And in the courtroom when I cross-examined. The answers cascaded in on him. Except the judges were all jerks. Always siding with the junkies. I was a good student. I loved getting my grades. I loved making honors. I liked cleaning up neighborhoods. How can I stay sober and enjoy it?! How ...
When Wapinski returned Sherrick was no longer sweating. Bobby led him slowly, quietly to the fire circle. He flicked a match, set the kindling ablaze, added larger sticks, explained the rules, the vocabulary. “Tonight,” Bobby said, “I will call you T
ë
me [tah-may], Wolf.”
Sherrick chuckled. That’s cool, he thought.
“
W
ë
li
[wah-lee],” Bobby said. “Good.”
“
Yuh
o
,” Sherrick responded. Okay.
The talk evolved. The truth stick passed frequently.
“Maybe,” Bobby said at one point, “the only people you respect are conscientious objectors of the antiwar movement, but I don’t know why. You say the antiwar movement stopped the war, but the war did not stop. The war did not stop in ’73 when we left or in ’75 when Saigon fell. They had no effect on ending it. They only affected the outcome. So they’re really not antiwar, are they?”
“Yes they—”
Wapinski held up the stick, continued. “They were simply anti-American–war effort, T
ë
me. Which I recognize as a valid position. But let’s get the verbiage straight. I was antiwar. I was an antiwar soldier. I tried to stop the violence by winning. They did not try to stop the violence. They did not even see the other side. They only wanted to stop me. And you. We were their focus. And they did. But they didn’t stop the violence and now they’re trying to get to our minds, trying to convince us they did, or that if they didn’t, it was our fault. They still want to control the focus. The people I most respect are the conscientious participants. Conscientious participants, T
ë
me. Of the COs ... what’s conscientious about ignoring people who are being tortured or murdered? What’s conscientious about standing by while one nation overruns another—” Again Sherrick attempted to object but Bobby raised his voice, raised the stick, pushed on, “OR standing by when one faction within a nation enslaves or overruns the people of that nation?” Sherrick shifted anxiously. Bobby clutched the stick like a tomahawk. “And what’s conscientious about abandoning an ally in the name of ending the war when in reality the war was not ended and our ally was uprooted, forced into third-class citizenship, starved, slaughtered? What’s conscientious about denying the successes of the American effort? Right now everybody, most of the brotherhood, wants to make everybody else, those that didn’t go, believe that the whole time they were over there the entire country was a free-fire zone and they were always in peril. That’s bullshit. You know it. I know it. But it serves a lot of people’s purpose, some of those that went and lots of those that didn’t, to make it out like it was
constant
peril. Your chances of being killed in Viet Nam—if you were black and from New York City or Washington, D.C.—were less than being killed in your own neighborhood!
T
è
pi
[teh-pee, ‘Enough’].” He passed the stick.
Sherrick exploded. “Revisionist bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!” He shook the stick as he spoke. “I’ll prove it to you. I’ll prove it to you with your own books. You want to run discovery exercises?! I’ll show you discovery. I’ll teach you discovery. You’ve got these guys on wishy-washy bullshit detail. If you seek shallow solutions to deep puzzles, you’ll only solve the surface of the problem.” Wapinski didn’t speak but his eyes bore intently across the fire, into Sherrick. He had seen Sherrick turned on only once before, when he’d asked him for legal advice over Miriam’s attorney’s letter. Sherrick was leaning in close, into the heat. “You’re such a fucking revisionist! What that did to me! What Nam did to me—”
Sherrick clammed up. Begrudgingly he passed the stick. Wapinski grasped one end, forced the other back into Sherrick’s hand so they both held it. “When something’s been misrecorded,” Bobby said, “or only partially recorded, is it revisionism to correct or expand the record?”
“It is,” Sherrick said, “if you change the meaning without justification.”
“Then I think we’re not revisionists.”
“I’ll prove you are.”
“
Wëli
.”
Again longer exchanges, probes, attacks, withdrawals. “You’re stuck, T
ë
me, on something that is past, something set, something static. Instead why not be concerned about something now, something ongoing like the circumstances of this veteran community, or of the peoples of Southeast Asia—today?”
Then late, late night, talking about Nam, about incidents, about punishment:
“I think I suspected it even while it was happening.” Sherrick held the truth stick. His head was down, his voice low. “Maybe a second before I opened up ... maybe longer ... You know, Man. I mean all doorgunners fear it. You train so it doesn’t happen. You know it can. You’re always aware of it so you don’t let it happen. You know, you’re right at treetop level. You’re sliding past a hill. Guys down there are callin for help. They’re gettin hit. You’re the cavalry. You’re comin to the rescue. Jungle’s black as the inside of an unlit coal mine at midnight. Black as these woods. You see flashes. You’re told our guys use red tracers, their guys use green. But you get there and both sides are using red and the RTO’s yelling, ‘The C.O.’s been hit. The F.O.’s been hit. Fire on em.’ And you open up. You know how it is. Your adrenaline’s pumpin. Your weapon’s pumpin. Your 60’s like a jackhammer. It’s exploding. You’ve got it in your hands, jarring you, mount or no mount shakin like crazy. Then you’re taking fire and you’re jacked up so high you’re squeezin trying to make the cyclic-rate zoom, wanting to turn the 60 into a hose of solid lead. Then the peter pilot’s screaming, ‘FRIENDLIES! Hold fire.’ You’re so jacked up, you’re firing, hearing him in your ears but not in your head for what seems like a month but is probably half a fuckin second.
“And then you’re back at base refueling, checking for damage, fuck all, and the dust-offs are coming back and there’s six dead and sixteen wounded and you know you got some of em and they’re your own fuckin troops!