1968. Part 16

YOUR COMMANDER.

YOU CANNOT AND MUST NOT.

MISTREAT YOUR PRISONER.

HUMILIATE OR DEGRADE HIM.

TAKE ANY OF HIS PERSONAL EFFECTS WHICH DO NOT HAVE SIGNIFICANT.

MILITARY VALUE.

REFUSE HIM MEDICAL TREATMENT IF REQUIRED AND AVAILABLE.

ALWAYS TREAT YOUR PRISONER HUMANELY.

Folsom smiled grimly at that. He knew how humanely GIs treated prisoners. He had read all about atrocities like torturing people and shoving them out of helicopters. Some of his patients had lots of stories about such things, although most of them did not. That was probably denial, of course, and understandable.

He puzzled over the cryptic statements in the back of the notebook. If he had asked Spider about them, he would know that Spider was just continuing a practice he'd begun in civilian life: whenever he heard a joke he liked, he jotted down the last line of it, to help him remember. Those last two were from the last jokes he'd heard in Vietnam: JOKE 1:.

Two GIs are in a barracks. One is telling the other about the fantastic time he had on his weekend pa.s.s: "I take the f.u.c.kin' bus into f.u.c.kin' Jonesville and go into this bar, you know, right by the f.u.c.kin' bus station?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not in there ten f.u.c.kin' minutes and in walks this f.u.c.kin' BEAUTIFUL babe, and she can go anyplace in the f.u.c.kin' bar but she sits down on the f.u.c.kin' stool right next to me!"

"No s.h.i.+t?"

"No f.u.c.kin' s.h.i.+t. We start to f.u.c.kin' talk and it turns out we're from the same f.u.c.kin' town-went to the same f.u.c.kin' high school, she used to watch me play f.u.c.kin' basketball."

"I'll be d.a.m.ned."

"f.u.c.kin' A. Anyhow, we go down to f.u.c.kin' McDonald's and we go to some f.u.c.kin' movie and, can you dig it, she pays for MY f.u.c.kin' TICKET. We're watchin' this f.u.c.kin' movie and all of a sudden she grabs my f.u.c.kin' c.o.c.k and whispers how f.u.c.kin' h.o.r.n.y she is and can we leave the f.u.c.kin' movie and go to herplace?"

"Aw, you're f.u.c.kin' s.h.i.+ttin' me."

"No, s.h.i.+t, man, she's a f.u.c.kin' LIVE one. We go one block to her f.u.c.kin' pad, man, and it is f.u.c.kin'

gorgeous. She must be a f.u.c.kin' millionaire. She pulls me into the bedroom and tears off all her f.u.c.kin'

clothes and jumps on this big f.u.c.kin' waterbed, and then we, uh, we had s.e.xual intercourse."

JOKE 2:.

This new 'cruit's been incountry about a month and he's frustrated. He goes to the Field First Sergeant and says, "Sarge, I signed up to come over here and kill gooks and make the world safe for democracy, but I ain't evenseen a f.u.c.kin' gook. They just hide in the bushes and take a shot at you and split. Am I ever gonna get one of them b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in my sights?"

The sergeant smiled and said, "Son, you just been goin' about it wrong. You got to usepsychology! You go out in the boonies and get yourself a good field of fire, hide behind somethin' solid and shout at the top of your lungs THE h.e.l.l WITH HO CHI MINH! You just shout it over an' over. Pretty soon the d.i.n.k gets so p.i.s.sed at you he starts to shoot. But you're behind somethin' solid, so you don't get hit. You just peek out and see where the muzzle flashes are comin' from-puffs of smoke, leaves fallin'-lock and load and empty a clip at the son of a b.i.t.c.h. I can guarantee you'll get your gook that way. He might even get so p.i.s.sed he'll step out in the open."

"Gosh, thanks, Sarge. I'll go do just that."

About two weeks go by. One day the Field First Sergeant is walkin' to the tennis court-did I say he was Special Forces out in Kontum?-and along comes two medics carryin' a stretcher, and on it is that private.

He looks like s.h.i.+t warmed over, man, all b.l.o.o.d.y bandages and blood bags drainin' into each arm.

"Good G.o.d, boy," the sergeant says. "What the h.e.l.l happened to you?"

He spits out some blood and teeth and says, "Well, Sarge, I did just like you told me. I got this clearing with a great field of fire and got down behind a big fat rubber tree and yelled out THE h.e.l.l WITH HO CHI MINH at the top of my lungs. I yelled it three times and it was just like you said. f.u.c.kin' gook ran right out into the clearing."

"Yeah? So what the h.e.l.l happened?"

"Aw. the f.u.c.kin' gook yelled THE h.e.l.l WITH LBJ and while we were in the clearing shakin' hands a f.u.c.kin'tank ran over us."

Exit Spider and two other patients were in the day room working on a jigsaw puzzle of an aerial photograph of Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. They were all wrapped in blankets. The day room windows were open, orders from Captain My Captain, and a stiff morning breeze blew in.

The puzzle was a challenge. There was no picture to guide them; it just came out of a s...o...b..x labeled pitcure of wash. D.C. They had a.s.sembled all of the border and were slowly building from there.

His blond friend, who had "poked" his wife, was named Arlo Sanders. The other puzzler was FrankWhite, who was not white and not particularly frank. In fact, he was downright evasive.

"This piece gonna go here," he said, and carefully positioned a piece exactly in the middle.

"Yeah, sure." Sanders turned to Spider. "We got a f.u.c.kin' genius on our hands."

"It's the f.u.c.kin' dome, man, the Capitol Dome." He pointed around the edge. "You got you' North Capitol Street, you got you' South Capitol Street, you got you' Pennsylvania f.u.c.kin' Avenue. Place they come together is where all you' senators eat bean soup."

"You live here too?" Spider said.

For about half a minute he didn't say anything, rocking back and forth, staring at the empty s.p.a.ce inside the puzzle. Then he started to croon. "Sometimes I live in the country," he sang, a hoa.r.s.e imitation of Leadbelly; "Sometimes I live in the town. Sometimes I take a great notion. to jump in the river and drown." He picked up another piece and set it down a couple of inches from the Capitol. "Union Station.

Got rails."

Sanders pulled the blanket tighter and looked back at the ward. "How long they gonna f.u.c.kin' take?"

Everybody who wasn't bedridden had been moved into the day room while the ward was being mopped out.

"Till the day room freezes over," Spider said.

Sanders crumpled up an empty cigarette pack and tossed it toward the wastepaper basket. It missed.

"Got a weed?"

Spider slid his pack of Luckies over. Sanders lit one and coughed. "How can you smoke this f.u.c.kin'

s.h.i.+t?"

"Death wish." He offered the pack to White, who shook his head slowly and started rocking again.

Two big white aides Spider hadn't seen before came down the corridor into the day room. "John Speidel?" one of them said.

"Him." Spider pointed at Sanders.

"f.u.c.k you, man." He held out his dogtags. "I'm Sanders. He's Speidel."

"I get confused," Spider said. "Ident.i.ty crisis."

"Giveyou a crisis," the other aide said. "Come on along."

"Where to?"

"You got a date with a angel."

"Yeah, I bet." He shook out a couple of cigarettes onto the table in front of Sanders and went with the two men, shuffling, looking pale.

Brush with deathBeverly had found a pair of painter's coveralls for a dollar at Next to New. They were a couple of sizes too large, baggy and shapeless, so she figured they might prevent Larry and the other guys from putting eyetracks all over her b.u.t.t.

Larry had already been at the job site for an hour when they showed up at eight. He'd used the time to mask one window and set out dropcloths, ladders, and buckets of paint.

The two other guys who showed up, Vince and Haskel, were white and long-haired like Lee. Vince was nineteen and had gotten his draft notice; he was nervously killing time until he had to report for duty in three weeks. Haskel was a vet who'd been out of the army less than a year. He'd lost two fingers from his left hand in Vietnam and wore hearing aids in both ears. He made Vince nervous.

Larry was a fortyish Puerto Rican who reminded Beverly of a fox, or a weasel. He was small, fast and restless but graceful with tools. His intensity had scared Beverly the first time they met; one long look that made her feel naked. But as she got to know him better, bringing lunch to Lee twice a week, she relaxed around him. He was just as intense with everybody else.

Larry sent Vince out to get everybody coffee and told the other guys to finish the first coat. They were painting the walls and ceiling of a single large warehouse room. He showed Beverly how to mask windows and paint the frames. It was rather delicate, compared to what the others were doing, and Beverly resented the implication that it was "woman's work." But the one-inch finis.h.i.+ng brush was easier on the hand and wrist than the heavy rollers the boys were using on the walls and ceiling, and it really was the right job for her. She enjoyed taking pains and getting things right. Besides, her right wrist still ached from the weekend's unaccustomed labor, wrestling boards and hammering nails downtown.

Once everything was set up, Larry went off to another job, tacitly leaving Lee in charge. The morning went by pretty fast. Vince had a big radio, and he amiably alternated between Top 40 and WGMS, the cla.s.sical station, each half hour. There were ten large windows along one wall. Beverly finished half of them before noon.

They sat on a rolled-up carpet and worked their way through a bucket of fried chicken and a sixpack.

Beverly declined beer because she already felt drowsy; she also pa.s.sed on the joint Lee rolled for dessert.

Haskel sat on the floor and leaned back against the carpet roll. He took one big hit on the joint, but that was all. "Can't do much s.h.i.+t," he explained to Beverly. "Takes me back to Nam."

"You were injured, uh, badly hurt."

He grunted and pulled up his s.h.i.+rt to show a long puckered scar that ran from his left breast down to his belt. "Same explosion that did my hand." He gestured. "I already told the guys about it."

"Go ahead," Lee said. Vince nodded but looked a little sick.

"It was a mortar round, might have been friendly fire, American." He blew out a breath. "Killed everybody else, the rest of the crew. We were a one-five-five howitzer."

"That's awful," she said. "Were you in a fire base?"

"Huh uh, no. That's what was funny. We were in a p.u.s.s.y, 'scuse me, a relatively safe position in a bigbase camp. We mostly did artillery demos for the new guys. I mean, this placenever got hit. But then one night it did."

"We never even got a round off. Started to get incoming, maybe four in the morning, and we were hustling to get inside the emplacement where the gun was, you know, like a low wall of sandbags. About half of us, six, got in and then a mortar round popped right in the middle of us. Cooked off one of our own rounds, blooey." He took a swig of the beer.

"It didn't hurt much. I was like just numb. Couldn't get up." He fingered a scar on his throat. "Tried to call for a medic but I couldn't make a sound. It was all dark; I didn't know what the h.e.l.l had happened."

His voice got flat and quiet. "Then somebody popped a star sh.e.l.l or illumination round, and it was really awful. I mean those guys were my buddies, and there they were. Just all over the place. I don't think there was any piece bigger than a leg. Looked down and saw my own insides and I just fainted. Didn't even notice the hand. Just fainted dead away."

Beverly felt a little faint, too. "How long ago?"

"Coupla years." He drew up his knees and leaned forward so his chin was resting on them. "It's mostly okay now. I was pretty f.u.c.ked up for a while, especially since I couldn't play the guitar. Used to do a lot of rock an' roll." He wiggled the two fingers and thumb on his left hand. "Found out I can do electric ba.s.s just fine, though. Workin' on that."

"Lee says your ex is in Walter Reed."

"He's, yeah." She looked at the floor. "He was wounded but that's not it. He's in the mental ward.

Something happened, I guess, that he just couldn't handle."

"He a newbie? I mean, did he have much combat?"

"I don't know. I don't think he wrote me about everything that happened. But before he was out in the field he was in Graves Registration. He said that was a lot worse."

Haskel made a face. "Ye-etch. Probably." He lit a cigarette. "I was in Walter Reed for eight weeks, rehab. Not a bad place, for the army."

"Did you get mail?"

"Oh, yeah. Dear old Mom wrote me once a week."

"I keep writing Spider but I don't get any answers. They don't let me see him, either."

"I tell her not to worry about that," Lee said. "They probably control the mail both ways pretty tightly in a mental ward."

"Oh, yeah, yeah. Nothin' you can do. Just hang in there." Haskel stood up and stretched. "Larry gonna check in at one?"

Lee looked at his watch. "Yeah, ten minutes. Let's look busy."

Beverly was glad that she worked with her back to the others, so they couldn't see her tears. She wasangry at Haskel for getting through it so well, and angry at herself for feeling mad at him. Angry at the army and the Vietnamese. Angry at Spider.

The sixth version The new suits were really uncomfortable, the way you could barely move your arms and legs, and the rubber thing clenched between your teeth. Actually, you could go anywhere by just thinkingin a special way; the suit's arms and legs would respond. But you couldn't move your arm to take the rubber mouthpiece out.

What was the thing for, anyhow? The jungle air was breathable, but not like Earth-lots of chemical smells and something like urine-so maybe the thing was just to keep us from talking to each other. Like askingWhat the f.u.c.k are we doing here? Whose war is this, anyhow?But we rolled, along through the jungle, smooth like on wheels, the comealong vines snapping at our ankles, the sky green, green-on-green.

Couldn't smoke with the f.u.c.king mouthpiece on, either, and I'm thinking why are we all dressed in light blue and white, standing outagainst all this green, and just at that thought it happens-Batman goes down dead and there's gunfire everywhere, loud, and then Moses explodes in a spray of blood and guts and I lose it, I lose it, I try to run but the suit doesn't work anymore, I'm helpless, struggling inside the suit, and here comes the man with the skull face, he has things like batons in each hand, he jabs me on both sides of the head and I pa.s.s out.

I wake up in the clearing and the man with the skull face shuffles from body to body with his batons.

Vultures walk behind him. Even the people who are obviously dead get the treatment: He touches both batons to the temples and there's this humming sound, and the guy's brains blow out the top of his head, boiling. My M16's just a few inches away, but I can't move a muscle; I'm totally paralyzed. Maybe I'm dead? I don't have the mouthpiece anymore, though I can still taste it; could I taste it if I was dead? He works his way to me and I try, try to reach the gun but all I can do is make little squeaky noises. He leans over with the batons but instead of blowing out my brains he touches them together. They make a blue spark and crackle and I smell ozone, and he's gone.

I'm sore all over. I feel like I've been in a fight. I'm tasting starch and I wake up in a bed. I guess I've gone a little crazy.

Schizo (3) In 1968 there were relatively few pract.i.tioners who would prescribe electroconvulsive therapy, "electro-shock," for patients who exhibited symptoms of schizophrenia. It was the treatment of choice for severe depression, and would still be so used for decades, especially with suicidal patients. It produces relatively fast results.

By the mid-1950s, most schizophrenics were given drugs, or a combination of drugs and psychotherapy, rather than electricity. Some clinics relied heavily on electroshock well into the 1970s, though; detractors called those places "shock boxes." Repeated use of electroshock, especially in high voltages, can damage the brain, impairing memory and intelligence.

Some lobotomists who preferred electroshock, rather than a conventional anesthetic, prior to stirring the brain with an icepick (see Schizo [1]) used garden-variety line current, straight from the socket. Certain of the psychological changes attributed to transorbital lobotomy were probably due to the jolt instead.Properly applied, it's not the electricity per se that affects the patient, but rather the coma induced by the shock. Injected drugs like insulin can bring on a coma with the same desired result, and in fact insulin shock was preferred, for schizophrenia uncomplicated by depression, by most therapists from the 1930s on.

The simplicity and drama of electroshock proved irresistible to some professionals, though, like Captain Folsom. His supervisor might not have approved the treatment for Spider if he had been familiar with the details of the case. But he was not particularly well informed about any of Folsom's patients. Most of his expertise and energy went into indulging and concealing his own problem, chronic and acute abuse of alcohol and other drugs.

Better living through electricity Spider had three shock treatments in a week, which made him withdrawn and tired. But he had also gotten a box from home: books and cookies. He drifted out of his lethargy enough to pa.s.s the cookies around the ward, gravely going from bed to bed with the coffee can full of homemade gingersnaps. Then he returned to inspect the books. His old dog-earedHandbook of the Heavens. An introduction to psychology.Conan the Conquerer. A rolled-up map of the Southern constellations.