Purple Daze (10 page)

 

She's not exactly a girlfriend because
she's married and all.
Her husband is in Vietnam.

 

Love, Mickey

 

P.S. Tell Ziggy I won't be in the States for a while,
so she can stay stoned a little longer.

I sneak in the side door of the gas station,
drop a quarter in the cigarette machine,

 

and wonder if I have the strength
to push the right button,
straighten out my life.

 

Mick says I'm a nymphomaniac
when I'm really just in love.

 

Before I quit school, I told Ms. Hawes
that I moved in with my brother, and

 

she took me to the teacher's lounge,
poured two cups of coffee, gave me a
dime and the number of a church
where I could get help.

 

I spent it on a glazed donut.

Dear Cheryl,

 

We started packing maxi pads
in our helmets to plug sucking
chest wounds.

 

Another thing—
war flicks don't know shit about dying.
No one staggers in slow motion crying,
“Mama!”

 

They drop like puppets with
their strings cut.
Zapped.
Offed.
Lit up.
Dead as fucking door knobs.

 

I never prayed before I came here.

 

Love, Phil

 

P.S. My M-16's chipped, cracked,
metal parts worn through the bluing,
cuz it never leaves my side.
P.P.S. .45 is rusted shut.
Yo-yo can still walk-the-dog though.

Dearest Cheryl,

 

DON'T TEAR THIS UP!!! PLEASE!!!

 

I'll do anything if you'll just forgive me.
Anything.
I'm on my knees, begging,
please
,
I love you so much I can't eat or sleep.
All I think about is holding you.

 

I look for you everyday before and after school,
between classes, during nutrition at lunch.
Guess you've been cutting Hawes's class,
and using someone else's locker.
Has your mom told you I called?
About a million times!

 

PLEASE CALL ME!!!

 

I love you more today than ever, Don

 

P.S. Are you still pen pals with Mick & Phil?
P.P.S. I got that job at the club. $1.25 an hour.

Love is like sticking
your car keys in a pocket with
your sunglasses and thinking
your glasses won't get scratched.

2 a.m. December 1

 

Me and Gunther have guard duty in the
tower, a mini-hooch without the screen.

 

A 20-foot high platform,
Permanent Target Duty.

 

 

Mortars propel from some gook hooch.
I've got my buddy Blooper, an M-79 grenade launcher,
like a large bore, single barrel, sawn-off shotgun.

 

Our Xmas toys light up everything, moving or not.
M-18 Claymore mines—
front toward enemy
—
steel ball bearing shrapnel. Fugas. Trip flares.
Illumination flares, mini-chutes raining light.
Tracer rounds, ribbons of chrome-orange metal.

 

Hueys roll in.
Fighter pilots in helmets, shorts, zoris.
Annihilate the place.
Rat-a-tat-tat.

 

Chaos.
Silent night, holy night.
Destruction.
All is calm, all is bright.
Extermination.
Sleep in heavenly peace.

 

Bits of beauty everywhere.

Stable horses, $2.50 an hour.

 

I broke all the rules, galloped
soon as I left the barn,

 

like dancing to “Hang on Sloopy,”
naked,

 

free.

Bubba dropped me at Hughes Market
with a list:

 

Crispy Critters
Ding Dongs
Potato Crisps
Sweet Tarts
Dr. Pepper

 

Wheeling through produce, I see
Cheryl's mom thumping cantaloupes.
Her cart cradles chickens, carrots, squash—
nothing in a can or a box.

 

“Ziggy!” she says, rushing over.
“Where've you been?”

 

I self-destruct on the spot.

I keep having this dream.
A short, sharp sound.

 

 

When I turn, a squat brown boy
jabs a gun in my gut.

 

 

He swings the butt at my head.
I empty a clip in his face.

 

Bones fly. Chip by chip.
A tooth.

 

Another round of shoot-a-gook.

 

I wake up sweatin' blood.

 

God forgive us.

USS
Hermitage LSD-34
Somewhere Over the Rainbow

 

Dear Cheryl,

 

What's the haps?

 

Thought I'd send you some stuff
I picked up on my travels.
Hope you like the poem about Santa Claus.

 

Guess what? I qualified for Heads Helmsman.
(That's the guy who steers the ship.)

 

Whenever we go through shallow water
I'll be called up to steer.
I have to know everything about the Pilot House.
If I make one mistake
I could run aground or into another ship.

 

I can't believe they'd give me so much
responsibility.

 

Later, Mickey

 

P.S. Last night I stepped into a card game
and walked out with $54.

Yesterday, I showed my mom the short story
I wrote as a makeup for Ms. Hawes's class
about a girl who stops taking crap from guys.

 

I got a dollar for my A.

 

This morning, Nuts & Chews set a gold
foil box on my place mat. Neatly folded
inside, an olive-green mohair sweater.
Cardigan, my size.

 

I think Mom's and my story will
have a happy ending, after all.

 

His name is Lou.

Imagine a family that chops, cooks,
eats their meals together?

 

Maybe I'll bake a cake today.

 

Angel or Devil's food?

Dear Cheryl,

 

Mama mined it.

 

Wrapped a bomb and
a baby in a blanket.
Blew two grunts to
smither-fuckin'-eens.

 

Whoever heard of a baby booby-trap?

 

Capt'n says we're fighting Commies
so our sons and daughters can crap
in a flush toilet.

 

All I want to do is come home in one piece
and make babies and live a quiet life in a
time and place without war.

 

With love, Phil

 

P.S. I hope I never get used to this.

It's unreal, like a movie, or photos in the newspaper, or Hollywood
actors, although I know that's not true, not really, but it's easier, safer,
to think of them as fake soldiers touched up with makeup, red-dye
blood, it
is
easier,
was
easier, to pretend the war is a movie, but I know
it's real, because Phil's real, and his letters are real, and now I wish I'd
been paying more attention to all the Gunthers and Phils on the news,
and I've decided to spend six months allowance on books of tickets for
Disneyland and I'm going to tear out all the “E” tickets for Phil. ...

Cold C-ration breakfast.
Pack up.
Move out.

 

Cold C-ration lunch,
ham and lima beans,
warmed on an exhaust
manifold.

 

March.

 

Frag grenades.
Body count.

 

Another crappy meal.

USS
Hermitage LSD-34
DEEP SHIT

 

Dear Cheryl,

 

I'm up to my ass now.

 

First, on the way back from Bermuda
I got caught sleeping on watch. Second,
I got in a fight in the chow line and was taken
straight to the Executive Officer's stateroom.

 

He said, “This is it sailor. No more chances.”

 

Then I got busted drinking on a phony ID
and spent the night in jail. The next morning
I was right back up here.

 

Guess I won't get liberty for a while.

 

Love, Mickey

 

P.S. My new girlfriend says I'm a godless alcoholic.
That slays me!

cheryl,

 

this is the last page in my journal and i wanted to tell you that i don't
know why i did it—it wasn't about mickey or don or me—mostly it
wasn't about me because i'm nothing and that proves it because only
a nothing would do what i did in the gas station and then something
like that to her best friend—and i don't expect you or god to forgive
me because i'll never forgive myself—but i saw your mom at the
store and she looked so happy and i know it's because she's in love
and married a nice man and i think it's about time someone in our
crowd was happy and i'm extra glad it's you.

 

me

 

White powder buffers a tiny pink pill
inside a red and white capsule. The infirmary
prescribes them instead of aspirin.

 

Supposed to be better for our guts, since
we drink like fish and eat street crap.

 

I split the hulls,
stash the pills,
trash the rest.

 

Pretty and pink, she sinks into a
red, white, and blue-edged envelope.
I free her with my tongue, chase her
down with warm beer.

 

A perfect girlfriend who knows how
to take my mind off everything that's
happening here.

Professor James is wearing a Betty Crocker
apron, brandishing a broom, lecturing on the
general unhappiness of women in our society.

 

He says television and movies, newspapers
and magazines, schools and even our
parents are manipulating us into thinking

 

housewife
is synonymous with
occupation
.

 

He says women are victims of a false belief
system that expects us to find meaning in our
lives through our husbands and raising children.

 

“Housework can be done by any 8-year-old,”
he says, trading the broom for a paperback,
The Feminine Mystique
by Betty Friedan.

 

“Who would like to borrow it?”

 

I raise my hand.

Phil's in Nam.
Not Nancy.
Not Ziggy.
Not me.

 

Why? Anatomy?
Ejaculator versus baby maker?
Does that make him expendable?

 

Who hasn't said,

 

 

I scream that and more about
The-Dirty-Rotten-Two-Timer.

 

 

If thoughts are things
a murderer resides in my head.

Bubba's still asleep so I fire up a
breakfast doobie and polish off a
package of Lorna Doone cookies.

 

I find Ms. Hawes in the phone book
and call to tell her I'm still writing in
my journal and ask if it's okay to send
her a poem sometime, but I'd understand

 

if it's not, because she has over 250 students
a day if you count all of her English classes,
plus homeroom and after school detention
and,

 

she asks if I can help her out on Sunday.
I'm too stoned to come up with an excuse.

 

Now what?

 

Something gets his arm at the elbow,
and he gives a funny little wave, like
a flag salute, watching his hand crawl
on the ground.

 

Head down, he mutters, “Crap-ola,”
as if he'd dropped his only glove.
Then he passes out, real laid-back.

 

 

I hold him, my fingers clenched into fists.
He squeezes back, still alive, hanging on.
Jesus, there's too much blood.

Phil wrote about Gunther getting wounded, said it was nothing serious,
that Gunther was one lucky son-of-a-bitch with his million-dollar
injury, because the war was over for him and he'd be back in the world
soon, but I wish he'd told me what happened, because my whole body
shakes when I think about him getting hurt, because I know Gunther,
even though I've never met him, I picture this big, sweet guy in a Santa
suit (so his buddies can have a laugh in hell) wearing his girlfriend's
garter belt (because he misses her so much) and I think about Pastor
Brunner playing his guitar in Sunday school and how I used to think
God was a musician and I was one of his instruments, and believing he
was strumming me, keeping me safe for eternal life, and I can't believe
anyone could be so brainwashed, even a five-year-old kid, and before I
know it I'm playing “Nowhere Man” on Mickey's guitar....