How Can You Mend This Purple Heart Read online

  “Let’s take a look in here,” he said as he gently pulled away the white tape and lifted the marshmallow patch away from the eye.

  The socket was empty.

  Bobby Mac’s eye had been mangled by shrapnel and Dr. Donnolly had cleaned the empty hole and removed any remaining tissue earlier this morning.

  “It’s looking pretty good,” he said as he taped the marshmallow back down. “How’s it feel?’

  “Like there’s a hole where there shouldn’t be a hole,” he snarled. “It’s kind of drafty.”

  “It won’t be too long before we can fit you with a replacement,” Dr. Donnolly assured him.

  “In the meantime, I’ll keep an eye out for you!” Bobby Mac hooted.

  Dr. Donnolly grinned and moved down the ward glancing again at Earl Ray. Earl had been watching and quickly turned his head as he and Dr. Donnolly made eye contact.

  “Where’re you from?” Sgt. Bobby Joyce asked, his one eye back on me.

  “Missouri, how ’bout you?”

  “Barlow by-God, North Carolina.”

  “You don’t sound like you’re from North Carolina. Where’s your accent?”

  “My old man’s full-blooded Cherokee. Sent me off to the Marines to keep my ass out of trouble,” Bobby Mac laughed. “Didn’t work. Got into more shit in ’Nam than anybody. Got to where I didn’t even want to go home between tours, but they made me. Wait ’til he sees me now.”

  “They coming up soon?”

  “Shit, I don’t think he even knows I’m in the States. The brass tried to find him to let him know I’m here, but the old man moves around a lot. He gets drunk so much he can’t find his way back home,” he laughed. “My mom left him and me when I was five or six. Life ain’t so bad. It’s all in how you look at it. Just don’t give a shit.”

  “I hear you,” I said, wishing I had just a small dose of his don’t-give-a-shit. “So you jumped on a live grenade? Jesus, that takes balls.”

  “No balls at all, man. Just did what I was supposed to do.”

  “Yeah, not everyone always does what he’s supposed to do,” I said, almost choking on the words.

  “It was fucking nothing.”

  Sergeant Bobby Mac Joyce was halfway into his voluntary third tour and the amount of time he had spent in combat was approaching two and a half years. On that fateful day in Vietnam, a grenade tumbled from the air, landing between him and five of his platoon buddies. He dove head-first in an effort to grab it and toss it back into the black hole of the thick jungle foliage. The hot frag exploded just before he could release it. It was a partial dud and detonated with half its potential, sparing his life. He was recommended for the Silver Star.

  He had been a Marine’s Marine—always ready, always first to go, no questions asked, always decisive, do what it takes to stay alive—and the Corps comes first.

  But the half-breed Indian kid from North Carolina who stepped onto Vietnam soil in mid-1966, gung-ho to kick ass and take names, was generations gone from the Bobby Mac lying next to me.

  With his twenty-second birthday only weeks away, he was the oldest patient on the ward. By now, combat and survival were the only two things he knew. They were the only two things he had done for nearly two and a half years.

  He had learned to stand up to superiors’ orders, his experience telling him time and time again that what they were asking him and his buddies to do was beyond the brink of stupidity. It had reached a point where he could do without them, but they couldn’t do without him. He knew the enemy better than he knew himself and he thrived on making it a game of survival, a game of war—his war. For Sgt. Bobby Mac Joyce, it had become a war of one-on-one and everyone else could go to hell.

  Even before the explosion, he had decided the third tour was going to be his last. He had tired of the rain and the heat, tired of the bullshit, the revolving door of lieutenants wanting to use him for training exercises, and he was just plain tired of killing people.

  “So your old man’s Cherokee?” I said. “My great-grandmother was Cherokee on my dad’s side.”

  “Ain’t that some shit! By God, life just got better. I’m lying next to a relative!” he howled out. “We’ll have us a by-God family reunion right here!”

  “Yeah, let’s just fuckin’ celebrate,” Earl Ray spat out.

  “What’s your name, Marine?” Bobby Mac volleyed back at Earl.

  “What’s it matter to you?”

  “Hey man, just trying to see who I’m sleeping in the same room with,” he laughed.

  Earl Ray slid into his wheelchair and rolled over toward Sgt. Bobby Joyce. As he glided past me, he looked over and spat out a dry spit. I watched from the corner of my eye as he rolled around to the right side of Bobby Mac’s bed.

  “Glad to see that frag didn’t get your dick,” Earl Ray said, pointing to the familiar plastic bag.

  “Yeah man, ain’t no way with this club on my hand I could hold onto that pitcher to piss in, and I couldn’t find anybody to hold my dick for me, either!” he laughed.

  “The name’s Earl Ray,” he said, blowing air up from the corner of his mouth.

  “Bobby Mac Joyce. Glad to know you, Earl Ray.”

  I overheard the two sharing stories for more than an hour before Earl returned to his bed. For the first time since he had called me a non-combat motherfucker, he had a grin on his face.

  Sgt. Bobby Mac Joyce’s presence brought a much-needed and contagious optimism to the ward. Even Doc Miller and Miss Berry were inspired by his easy cheerfulness and his unabashed live-for-today exuberance. It was real and everyone could feel it.

  His ever-present jolliness and wantonness at everything, at anything, at life, exuded his totally don’t-give-a-shit attitude. So much time at war, so much time crawling through pitch-black nothingness, at being invisible, at witnessing death and mutilation, so much killing, and so much absence from civilization—it was enough to make a guy laugh.

  The ward settled in for the night and just after the lights went out, Bobby Mac called over to me. “Hey Shoff, you ever watch that show, Laugh-In?”

  “Yeah, all the time.”

  “Well, you know how those Rowan and Martin guys sign off? Dan Rowan says to Dick Martin, ‘Say good night, Dick,’ and Dick Martin says, ‘Good night, Dick.’”

  “Yeah, they do it every time,” I said.

  Sgt. Bobby Joyce slid the softball-sized club covering the stump of his right hand under the sheet, lifted it slightly, peered down with his one eye at his limp penis, and called out, “Good night, dick!”

  When I stopped laughing, I raised my sheet and in my best soft, female impersonation, I said sweetly, “Goood night, dick.” We laughed out loud with Ski raising his sheet over his head, “Gootnight deek!”

  It went up and down and across the ward for fifteen minutes, generating laughter with every guy awake pronouncing to his catheter-laden best friend a “Good night, dick!”

  Just Among Friends

  THE NEXT MORNING, I was jump-started by a loud crash next to my bed. The day’s first ratchet job on Ski’s legs was in full progress. As Dr. Donnolly twisted down on the rods, Ski flung both arms uncontrollably from the sheering pain, hitting the nightstand and knocking his metal bedpan to the floor.

  Ski’s runny bowel movement from last night spattered everywhere—on his bed, my bed, Doc Miller’s pant legs, on the nightstand, and all over the floor between us.

  The bedpan tumbled like a giant coin wobbling on its edge, shuddered loudly in a crooked circle, and finally plopped down on top of the spillage.

  “Thanks, Ski!” Doc Miller laughed, shaking his leg; his bell-bottom white uniform was freckled shit-brown from pant cuff to knee. “Glad to get this over with so early in the day.” Even through the pain, Ski was noticeably embarrassed.

  Dr. Donnolly finished micro-turning the sockets and leaned over Ski. “We’ll get another set of X-rays and see how well we’re doing. I won’t make an adjustment for a couple more days. Give you a little b
reak.”

  “Thdank you, sir.” Ski said. “Eet doesn’t hurt all that bad.”

  “Thank you, young man.” Dr. Donnolly peered below his brow at Ski and grinned with appreciation.

  Dr. Donnolly turned to his right, his dedicated attention now on Earl Ray Higgins. He began slowly removing the elastic wrap and bandage from the stump of Earl Ray’s left arm. Earl blew a puff of air from the corner of his mouth as the last piece of gauze, stuck to his flesh, pulled loose.

  “It’s looking a lot better, Earl,” Dr. Donnolly said. “It won’t be too much longer until we can start measuring this for your new arm.”

  “Yeah, I can hardly wait,” Earl grunted.

  “Let’s have a look at the rest of you,” Dr. Donnolly said.

  “You don’t mean the rest of me, you mean what’s left of me,” Earl puffed.

  Dr. Donnolly peered at Earl with heavy concern. “We’re going to have you walking before you know it,” he assured him.

  “Easy for you to say,” Earl grumbled.

  Dr. Donnolly removed the wrappings from Earl’s leg stumps, exposing the bright red, partially healed ends, and examined them like an archeologist peering into the past.

  Dr. Donnolly’s skill with a surgeon’s knife was beyond any training. The scalpel was like a magician’s wand in his hands. He studied every wound, bone fragment, ligament, and tendon of a shattered limb with an intuitive knowledge of piecing them back together.

  He would craft and shape the ends of legs and arms like an artist with clay. With just the right cuts and the perfect tapestry of sutures, most often four or five times on the same limb over several surgeries, he would engineer the flesh and muscle to fit precisely into the sockets for the yet-to-come, custom-fitted plastic replacement limbs.

  He approached every patient and his recovery with the preciseness of an architect. From the first days of healing through the surgeries forming the stumps needed to last a lifetime, to the fitting of prosthesis, the physical therapy, the psychological planning, and eventually, to ambulatory self-care, Dr. Donnolly was careful not to leave any part of the recovery out of the equation.

  Earl Ray had been offered a pain shot ahead of the dressing changes, but told Doc Miller he would wait until the torture was over. “I want to lay back and enjoy the drugs,” he smirked. It hadn’t gone unnoticed by Dr. Donnolly.

  “You’re doing really well, Earl,” Dr. Donnolly assured him.

  “Yeah? Compared to what?”

  “Look Earl, I can’t imagine how you feel. But I…”

  “No, you can’t!” Earl shot in. “Ain’t nobody that can know how I feel! Jesus H. Christ!” He hammered a fist down into the mattress.

  “Earl, that’s not going to help you,” Dr. Donnolly said with a firm voice. “I need you to be positive about this. You need for yourself to be positive.”

  “Give me some space here, will you guys?” Earl barked.

  “Okay, Earl. We’ll finish up here and I’ll be back this afternoon,” Dr. Donnolly said. “We can talk then. Sound all right with you?”

  “Yeah, but can we do it before the next torture session? Give me that needle, Doc. You guys are like gorillas.”

  “See you this afternoon,” Dr. Donnolly said as he headed down the ward.

  Doc Miller put the needle into Earl Ray’s arm with a little more force than usual and Earl grinned.

  “That all you got?” he chided.

  “That’s it, Earl. Can’t wait for this to put you out,” he joked.

  “Me neither,” Earl muttered. He pushed a quiet stare in Ski’s direction and worked his blue-eyed glare over to me.

  “Hey non-combat motherfucker, what do you do in the Navy, scrub floors?” he sneered.

  I gave him half of a fuck-you look. Before I could say anything, he rolled to his side and pulled the pajama bottoms down just below the crack of his ass.

  “Kiss my ass, non-combat motherfucker.”

  “Kiss my ass, Earl. What do you want me to do, have ’em cut my legs off?”

  “Fuck you,” he said, and pulled himself upright with the trapeze bar, his right arm bulging. I was sure he wanted to squeeze my head like a cantaloupe.

  I tried to think what Earl might be thinking. He had lots of reasons to hate me. Most guys in the Navy and Marines didn’t like each other to begin with; it was one of those stupid, macho, inter-military rivalries. Someone from either camp just had to prove he was a bigger badass than the other one.

  I was a non-combat motherfucker, for sure, and for all he knew I was probably some spoiled rich kid who got in the Navy through family connections. I still had both legs and both arms, and someday I would walk out of here while he would roll out in a wheelchair. Even with plastic legs and an artificial arm, it was a wheelchair he would look to for mobility and freedom.

  Yeah, he had a lot of reasons to hate me. It was okay. I didn’t blame him. I would hate me, too, if I was Earl. No, maybe I wouldn’t. A lot of guys on the ward were looking at a life with a wheelchair and they didn’t hate me. It was Earl, and right now he was full of hate. And it was directed right at me.

  “Can’t wait to get my ass out of here,” he said to nobody. “Me and Jen, we’ll pick up where we left off.”

  Jen was Earl’s fiancée. They had been sweethearts all through high school and Earl talked with her on the ward phone at least three times a week. Any time he mentioned her name, his eyes would light up, and gradually shift to worry. I had overheard him telling Ski about the week he and Jen had spent before he left for Vietnam, the night he climbed into her second-floor bedroom window and stayed until almost sunrise. It was the first time they had made love and it was still sweet in his mind. Their last Saturday together was spent driving to the Smoky Mountains, making love behind the cover of a secluded waterfall. They had shared Coney Dogs and root beer floats at the A&W the night before he left.

  Earl and Jennifer were in love as deeply as any two people could ever be. Just holding hands sent fire and fear through their hearts. The thought of being apart created a panic that burned in the stomach. The day he left for Vietnam, Jen had stood in the doorway, sobbing from the other side of the screen door, as Earl Ray Higgins stepped off the back porch.

  “Dyou are verdy lucky guy,” Ski said. “My girlfriend told me to djust be careful, and I never heard from her again.”

  “What was her name?” Earl asked as he turned back over to face Ski.

  “I don’t dremember,” Ski shrugged. “My first time to get laid was in ’Nam.”

  “I never touched the stuff,” Earl replied. “Jen’s the only one for me.”

  “That’s why dyou are very lucky,” Ski said.

  “Yeah,” Earl puffed. “We’ll see how lucky I am.” He pulled himself up in a sitting position with the trapeze and began squeezing the hand ball with more force.

  “Hey Shoff,” Earl Ray said without looking my way. “You got a girl? I’ve seen you look at that picture almost every night.”

  I looked past Ski over to Earl, who was staring down at the stump of his left thigh.

  “Not anymore,” I said, trying as hard as I could to hide the delight of him not calling me a non-combat motherfucker.

  “Don’t be so happy, Shoff. You’ll always be a non-combat motherfucker to me. What’d she do, Shoff? Kick you out of the country club?”

  “The only Country Club I know is a malt liquor. And I hate the stuff. Anyway, she sent me a “Dear John” while I was in boot camp. Said we didn’t have a lot in common anymore. I found out later she left me for some chump she was screwing at college. Heard he was more her type. He was getting an education and had a Corvette.”

  “Sounds like you’re keeping tabs. Sounds like you don’t like what you’re hearing,” Earl prodded.

  “I’m over it. She doesn’t mean shit to me now,” I grumbled.

  “Yeah, well, her picture sure means shit. You stare at the damn thing enough.”

  “Just trying to figure out why I wasn’t good enough.
”

  “How long did you go with her?”

  “Just over a year. She was two years older than me and taught me what she knew. I thought we were wedding bell shit. Guess she had other plans.”

  “That’s life, man,” Earl shrugged. “Look at you now. A non-combat motherfucker laid up in here with me just twelve feet away. You join the Navy to see the world and look what you get. You’re in a world of shit.”

  I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes, wondering what to say. I wanted him to know I really cared, I was proud of him, I was ashamed of me. I wanted him to know how it was that I was in the Navy, I wanted to make things right, I wanted him to just believe I was a lot like him.

  “They don’t have country clubs where I come from,” I finally spoke out.

  “Jesus, you kept that in long enough,” Earl chuckled. “Where’re you from, anyway?”

  I took the opening and told him what I thought was important—or, at least, what I hoped would change how Earl felt about me. I started with the odd jobs—bus boy and dishwasher at the local restaurant, baling hay for the area farmers whose kids had already left for military duty, cutting timber in the Ozark Mountains and dragging the logs with a team of mules down through the rocks, yellow jackets, and rattlesnakes. I told him about loading up the old pick-up truck with firewood and hauling it into town to sell for grocery money for the family. I told him about my brothers who had enlisted ahead of me, the girlfriend who had talked me out of the Marines and turned me Navy, the same girl in the photograph. I told him about the fight I had with my old man. (I didn’t tell him I had gotten a student deferment to study art, for God’s sake.) I told him about my best friend who had joined the Marines and who was probably in boot camp or AIT at this very moment. I told him about the girls, the booze, and the car wreck, and I told him about William Otis Johnson. I didn’t say anything about the way Earl had flipped him off.

  “She fucked you twice,” Earl Ray said with a little laugh.

  “Say what?” I asked.

  “The girl in the photograph, she fucked you twice. She left you for some school boy on campus, and talked you out of being with your buddy in the Corps.”