Dear Mr. President Page 12

  DITHERS’S REHABILITATION

  I knew I had to go out of my way to make sure Dithers enjoyed his life here. And I knew I had made real progress over the past couple weeks. It got to where we were talking all the time. He would tell me about his dreams, and I’d tell him what I’d done the night before on my mission. He still was not, in my opinion, well enough to leave the bunker, and so of course he was really curious about what it was like up there. I’d tell him about the carnage. The innocent civilians. And he’d say, “That is seriously screwed up. I wonder if those people have any idea how lucky they are that you’re around to tend to them.” It was a question I’d asked myself plenty of times. I knew we were making real progress if Dithers could see things like that. I thought the day was fast approaching when we could go out together. I looked forward to it, because sometimes those nights got really lonely. And the fires by the highway burned constantly, and the sight of it all could definitely get a person down.

  So I did what I could to speed up Dithers’s recovery. And once while Dithers was sweeping up, I said, “Hey Dithers, have you ever tried yoga?” The chimps were fast asleep, and the peaceful atmosphere made me feel generous. Having personally benefited from the extreme results of regular yoga, I was anxious for him to reap the rewards too.

  Dithers rolled his eyes. “You mean that stuff that you’re always doing. The bending down and the breathing. Tying yourself up in knots stuff.”

  I chuckled. I hadn’t thought to consider what my yoga looked like on the outside. Since for me it was such a spiritual thing. The whole point was to burrow so deep down into my body that I’d forget I even had a body. I know a lot of people say it’s about self-realization, connecting the mind, body, and soul, but that’s not my take on it. “Yeah,” I said, grinning. “The knot stuff.”

  Then Dithers nodded his head and stated unequivocally that he hadn’t ever done yoga, and that yoga was for fags. I opted to ignore the dig, because I knew he did not mean it like that, that he wasn’t thinking of my dad when he said it, and I asked him if he’d like me to show him some moves.

  “Thanks but no thanks. Maybe in my next lifetime, Help People,” said Dithers. “You just do your thing. I’ll keep cleaning,” and he moved into the corner, away from me, energetically whisking the broom around.

  I took his response as a yes. “Here,” I said, taking the broom from his hand and setting it against the wall, “this’ll take just a couple of minutes. You’ll thank me for it later, I promise. If you don’t like it, you’ll never have to do it again.”

  Dithers got this numb look in his eye, his arm slumped by his side, and he said, “Okay.”

  I moved in close and put my hand on his hip. I was suddenly conscious that this was the first time we’d touched since I nursed his wound. “Let’s try this first,” I said. I showed him how to get into position for the Downward Facing Tree pose. “Now envision the roots of your feet slowly growing down into the ground, anchoring you to this spot,” I said. I reached down and adjusted the back of his leg, and he laughed.

  I looked at him like what the hell was that.

  “Sorry,” he said. “That just felt kind of funny.”

  We spent the rest of that afternoon going from pose to pose. I showed him how to flow from one to the next. We got all sweaty. There were some obviously embarrassing moments, like when I told him to raise his hands to the sky, but the mood was light, and he forgave my blunders. It was suddenly late. We were having so much fun I decided to skip my Mission for the Good of Mankind that night, and instead we just hung out in between the yoga stuff and rapped about things. Dithers told me that his dad was an albino. And an alcoholic. He said, “It was kind of sad. But I think my dad used to drink to try and forget.” Then he told me that when his dad started getting rough with his mother, shoving her around and yelling at her, he’d always step in the way and let his dad beat him instead of his mom. I said that I’d always known he had a good heart, and that story was proof positive. There was a moment of silence.

  “I’ve never told anyone that,” said Dithers, looking over at me. I turned and saw the steam coming up off him from all the sweat.

  “You’re all steamy,” I said. I looked over at the chimps in their cages. They were staring back at me, patiently, expectantly. Dennis cooed, “Hoo-hoo-ha.” I realized I hadn’t fed them dinner yet.

  “Hey, Help People.” Dithers slid over a little closer. “I’m sorry, man.”

  Everything was very quiet. I was getting this weird vibe I couldn’t explain.

  “For what?”

  “For calling you Gay Dad. That G.D. stuff. Back at the base. For giving you such a hard time about all that. That wasn’t cool.” He said it was probably his insecurity, because of who his own dad was. I tried to envision Dithers as an albino.

  Then I told him, don’t worry about it, that my dad was a fucking queer, and that I hated his guts for it. “So don’t sweat it,” I said. “No biggie. Trust me.” Then I rolled away from Dithers and grabbed some M.R.E.s and started to feed the chimps their dinner.

  PROPAGANDA LETTER #4

  Dear Son,

  War sure has changed, and frankly I think whatever dignity used to be in it has been bled out of it by the stupid technology. Last night on Nightline they were showing how a little remote-control airplane with a live video feed, an Unmanned Vehicle or something like that, was flying over Saudi Arabia and a bunch of Iraqi soldiers ran up to it waving white flags. The Nightline guy kept saying it was a historic moment in warfare, the first time humans surrendered to a machine. And I was thinking, Wow, this is the fourth most powerful army in the world? How do they grade these things, on a bell curve, because I’d sure hate to see the fifth most powerful army in the world. Do you realize that the citizens of Iraq don’t even want to be in a war, and that Saddam has forced them into military service, so that when you are killing Iraqi soldiers you are killing innocent people who don’t want to be there anyway? I’ve read in the news that most of the Iraqi soldiers are little boys and old men, what does that tell you? And why is it that our government won’t let any journalists in the war theater? Why the censorship? They’re denying us the liberty that they claim you’re over there defending.

  Rob’s been asking me a bunch of questions about my time in Vietnam, and recently I haven’t been able to sleep because all these memories keep flooding back. Sometimes I feel like I’m back in the shit all over again, and I can smell the rice paddies and the water buffalo in the bedroom with me. Rob suggested maybe I was being too hard on you. Rob said how do you expect your son to understand where you’re coming from when you’ve never even talked about your own war experiences. When Rob said this, he was holding my Medal of Honor because he’d asked to see it. I know you think I’m a hero, but I want you to know that I’m not. There was nothing heroic about what we did over there. I was a sick young man back then. Sometimes I think Nam is the hangover that Bush is trying to cure by a silly victory over there in Iraq. Because you know in the big picture we got our asses kicked over there, right? Don’t let anyone tell you different, the NVA and the Vietcong were the toughest and mightiest warriors that America has ever seen. The government tricked us into fighting that war with all their bullshit about the heroics of WWII. They used words like evil and honor and dangled our dads in front of us so that we wanted to go over there and be heroes too. We walked into a war that had been going on for twenty years before us and got our asses trounced.

  And the things I saw. You’d be out on patrol and come up on a mine site, where some gooks had been blown apart. There’d be pieces of bodies strewn everywhere, arms, legs, half a skull, a torso with the ribs poking out, a kneecap, and the thing is I stopped looking, I didn’t even care. What happens to a person when he stops caring? You forgot that the Vietnamese were even people. One time I was crawling through this underground tunnel, because we’d been told there were some NVA officers in there. I heard these voices, all this chattering, and I was thinking, hot damn. So I c
rawled up the opening where the voices were coming from and chucked a grenade in there and then bam. When I went to inspect the damage, you know what it was, it was a room full of women. They had on some kind of religious costumes. They were all dead. I’ve got a hundred more stories like that. The things you do in war you have to live with for the rest of your life. How am I supposed to live with something like that? You tell me. How am I.

  Dad

  FINALLY THE DAY CAME FOR DITHERS TO LEAVE THE BUNKER

  Finally the day came for Dithers to leave the bunker. We had been getting along great for the past couple weeks, and I knew he needed to get his endurance up if he was going to accompany me on my missions. So I suggested we go out and play some catch. To help that arm of his get stronger. We exited the bunker and went about two clicks off the highway so that we were out of sight.

  “Oh my God,” said Dithers when he saw the highway from a distance. Plumes of smoke were trailing up off the smoldering cars.

  “See,” I said. “Can you smell it?” The barbecue smell was especially strong that day. And then we threw a detonated grenade back and forth. It made me feel like a kid again, and we both laughed, especially because Dithers was having to learn how to throw with his left arm. He looked positively goofy.

  “Try to get your hips into it,” I said to Dithers, after retrieving yet another dud throw from the sand. I looked at Dithers, and he was grinning. The sunlight was catching in his hair. I decided right then and there that we’d make an effort to get out more. I reared back, signaling to Dithers that I was going to really hum this one.

  I played all the sports as a kid, but baseball was my favorite. In Little League I played third base for the Fancy Death Life Insurance Bombers. My dad never missed a practice. He’d stand out there in his rope sandals with a couple of the other die-hard parents. And my whole thing was I would pretend I did not know Dad was there. I’d make a flying leap to stop the ball and whip it to first like a cannon. I’d skin my hip to a pulp sliding into home. Then when I stepped up to the plate I would blow my arms out trying to knock the ball out of the park. I knew a lot of the kids thought I was a jerk. For trying so hard. But I didn’t care. This didn’t have anything to do with them.

  I threw the ball and Dithers dove to catch it, and ended up doing a face plant in the sand. He came up laughing. “Hoo. I don’t think I’m going to the big leagues any time soon,” he shouted. A breeze picked up and the barbecue smell came up off the highway. I tried not to think about all the rotting corpses out there.

  “Here,” I said. “Throw me a fly ball. Make me work.”

  Dithers got to his feet, and then did this little hop-skip, and chucked the grenade way, way up in the air, so that I thought it was going to knock the sun out of the sky.

  I remember one game we were getting routed by the fourth inning. Coach moved me from third base to pitcher because he’d used up the other pitchers’ eligibility the week before, and because I guess he figured he had nothing to lose. Dad and I always secretly suspected that I’d make a great pitcher; I had a strong arm, and this was my big chance to save the day and show the coach what Dad and I secretly knew: that I should be the starting pitcher. I could almost hear Dad tighten up in the bleachers with excitement as I trotted out to the mound and threw some warm-up pitches. I was really humming them, and I could feel the world smiling at me, claiming me for one of its marvelous creatures. I touched the bill of my cap. I wet the tip of my fingers with my tongue. I blazed a couple more fastballs across the plate for good measure. Then the umpire shouted, “Play ball.” And for the rest of that inning, until we had to forfeit, I’ve never felt more shame in my life. I threw wild ball after wild ball. I walked six batters straight. And when I wasn’t throwing wild, the other team was connecting with everything I threw. Even their benchwarmers were getting a piece of me.

  I sprinted after Dithers’s fly ball and leapt and stretched out, my body soaring parallel to the ground, and there was the smack of the grenade as it landed in my palm. I crashed into the sand, victorious.

  “Damn,” said Dithers. “Awesome.”

  I stood up and waved the grenade like a trophy. I took a bow.

  “I’d give you a standing ovation but,” and he nodded at his shoulder, “you know the whole sound-of-one-hand-clapping thing.”

  My face was flushed, and I felt the thrill of the catch rush through my body. I felt like running into the highway and picking up a tank and throwing it.

  “Hey,” said Dithers, trotting up to me. “That was really fucking amazing. Did you used to play ball or what?”

  All the blood rushed out of my face. I felt the crushing reality of our situation set back in. I wanted to puke because of that smoky smell. All those dead people. If I ran out into the highway, I’d probably just get run over. Suddenly Rob’s mustached face was hovering there in front of me. Which one is it? Are you going to kick my ass? Or are you going to stick my head up my ass? Because I don’t know how my head would fit up my ass if you are busy kicking it. Then I heard my faggot dad’s laugh.

  “Naw,” I said to Dithers, turning to head back to the bunker. “I never did get to play. I always wanted to though.”

  After my humiliating pitching experience, I couldn’t stop crying on the drive home. There was a purple can of grape pop in my lap that I hadn’t even bothered to open. I was crying because I was so embarrassed that I was crying. Dad had this tight look on his face and he didn’t say a word the whole time. I could tell he wasn’t upset; he just felt my pain and knew there was nothing he could say to make it better. When we pulled into the driveway and the car came to a stop, he squeezed me on the shoulder and said, “We don’t have to try and explain this to your mom. You go in and get washed up. But I don’t care what happened out there. I’m proud of you. Do you hear me? You are my son. Don’t ever forget that.”

  THE DAYS BEGAN TO BLUR

  The days began to blur, and it got so I couldn’t remember life any other way. There were more and more Iraqis on the highway at night, trying to make it back to Baghdad. Some nights I’d tend to as many as three people. My only concern was the M.R.E.s. We still had plenty, but between me and Dithers, and the chimpanzees, we’d already run through half the box. Dithers and I fell into a routine of doing yoga together in the evening, right before I’d head out for the night. Dithers was a natural. Sometimes I would inadvertently come out of the void because I lost my concentration, and I’d look over and Dithers would be crouched down, holding the Half Moon pose, with this very serene look on his face. I have to admit I was a little jealous.

  But one time I opened my eyes, and Dithers was standing right in front of me with a grin on his face. I tried to hide my surprise.

  “Dithers,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say. “Hi.”

  “Hey,” he said. “I want you to show me that one pose you do.”

  I said I didn’t know what he was talking about. He was right up in my face, all smiles.

  “You know the one. Where you lay down like this.” He got down on the ground facefirst. He looked idiotic.

  “You mean the Half Locust?” I lay down in the Half Locust.

  “Yeah,” he said, grinning even wider. So I showed him. I put my arms around him, guiding his limbs into the correct posture. I knelt beside him as he lay there.

  “But what about this part here?” he said. “This doesn’t feel right,” pointing to his hip.

  “Looks right to me,” I said. I reached down under him and before I knew what was happening, Dithers had adjusted himself so that my hand was cupping his groin area. I got a very strange feeling in my stomach. An odd sensation. His hand came up around my neck and pulled me to him, very hard. It felt aggressive. “Help me, Help People,” he murmured, but there was some menace in his voice and my hand was pinned between his groin and the ground. I felt things spinning out of control, and that weird feeling had bloomed so that it was running through my entire body.

  “Help me, Help People,” only this tim
e louder, meaner. Like a growl.

  I swung my elbow around and clipped his jaw and then leapt to my feet.

  “What the fuck,” I said. The chimps joined in, baring their teeth and hooting.

  Dithers looked genuinely surprised to see me on my feet. He was rolling his jaw around. I noticed he had an ammo can in his hand, which he tossed away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, getting to his feet. “I don’t know what that was. I think it’s the stress. Maybe being cooped up down here is starting to get to me. My bad. Okay. I’m sorry. No problem, right?”

  I was confused. I didn’t want to know what any of this meant. I couldn’t quite get my mind around what had just happened, and the confusion turned to anger. I looked at the chimps and wanted to chop their heads off. They started hooting and screeching, as if they could read my thoughts.

  I threw the broom at Dithers and said, “Here. This place is a fucking mess.”

  A QUICK CLARIFICATION, BEFORE WE GO ANY FURTHER

  No matter what I may be accused of, I am definitely not gay. I want to put that right out there. The closest I’ve ever come to being gay was in the fourth grade. And that was a long time ago. I mean, to be perfectly honest with you, my fourth-grade year was probably the gayest year of my life. That was the year that I spent each recess out on the corner of the playground playing Truth or Dare. And on the fateful day in late spring, Freddie Slacknit produced a carrot he’d smuggled from the cafeteria, and double-dog dared me to stick it up his “pooper.” At first I didn’t know what to do. The other kids looked at me expectantly, and Freddie already had his pants down around his ankles. I almost walked away. But in the end Freddie had to go to the school nurse to get the carrot out, and by the next day word of what had happened spread through the Parent Majority Coalition and somehow I was being pegged as “the ringleader.” The kids at school started calling me Rabbit Butt. They’d spank themselves and start howling when I walked by. Secret PMC meetings were held. Teenagers from the high school drove by and hummed carrots and lettuce heads at our house. Four months later it was so bad we had to move to a house on the other side of Raleigh, and I transferred schools. That was a long time ago. So obviously I didn’t feel compelled to mention any of this to my recruiter when he asked me if I was gay.