Robert Mason - Chickenhawk - Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

My father, who had had another stroke, was now an invalid. With his caretaker gone—my mother had actually cooked for him as a cripple—he made conflicting demands of me and my sister. Depending on the whims of his depression, he wanted a new apartment, he wanted to go to a nursing home, he wanted a companion to live with him, he wanted to move in with us.

I had already started drinking scotch, drank more while my mother suffered, but I noticed with alarm that I was now drinking at least a bottle a week and increasing. I’d thought that drinking was a habit of the past, something I’d grown through.

As the date to leave for Vietnam drew near, I began to have more and more symptoms of distress. I refused to acknowledge them. I had made a commitment and I would stick by it. I called Larry Heinemann, told him I was having problems. He told me to try to hang in there.

The symptoms got worse. I began to have chest pains, dizziness, irregular heartbeats. I couldn’t sleep. I really believed that I had overcome all this bullshit, yet here it was, a monster from the past, revisiting. I drank more. If I drank enough, I slept, but I also remembered where that had once led. I was retreating down an unfortunate path. This could not be.

Two weeks before our scheduled departure, I called David Hunt. I told him I wasn’t going with them.

“What? Why?”

“I’m having real problems,” I said. “Stuff is happening to me that hasn’t happened for years. I’m a mess. I don’t want to go over there and be a drag to the others.”

“You know, Bob, this might be an opportunity to face your fears, overcome them.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Or go completely nuts. You don’t know how bad I feel right now, David, and I’m not there yet. I don’t think I harbor any resentment toward the Vietnamese. I might, but I think the idea of just seeing that country—remembering the waste—I think I’m not ready yet. I will go, when I’m ready. Not now.”

“A lot of people are going to be disappointed, Bob. Your book is being translated into Vietnamese. You know who’s going. Everyone’s a respected writer. This is a historical trip. Even Larry Heinemann is coming; he’s your friend, right?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry, David. Please tell everyone that I’m sorry. I’ve got to go with my gut feelings now. I’ve ignored them in the past, and I was wrong.”

I slept that night through.

The next day I felt better. In a week—though I felt badly about missing the trip—I felt the tension subside, I became calmer, more comfortable. While the writers made their tour, I stayed home and wrote.

Someday I will return to Vietnam, find Nguyen Quang Sang—the man who shot down Hueys—and take him for a ride.

I drink, not as heavily. I don’t smoke cigarettes except when I forget at a party or during the holidays. When things are going well in my life, I feel pretty good. Stress brings on the symptoms I’ve lived with since Vietnam.

I have come to realize that Vietnam did affect me, that I’m not crazy.

The effects are losses, mostly.

I lost my career as a pilot.

I lost the children Patience and I wanted when we were first married, brothers and sisters for Jack. Jack lost a normal childhood and adolescence.

I lost a feeling of fellowship. I am different from people who have not seen combat, especially combat in which people died for a politician’s ego.

I lost the belief that I could trust my government.

I very nearly lost Patience. And by staying with me, Patience has become a veteran of another kind of war.

Finally, I have come to realize that the most significant thing I lost in that war was peace.

When Polynesian sailors sail their canoes for weeks at a time on boundless seas without charts or compasses, they believe that they are sitting still, on a vacant earth, and that by moving their paddles correctly, by setting their sails properly, an island, their destination, will arrive on the horizon and come to them.

I move my body carefully and watch the ground pass beneath me and hedges and fences move by me until the steps of my house come to me and touch my feet. I experience the sensation that I am at the center of the universe, focused on what I’m doing, now.

I am looking for peace to arrive.