The rain wasn't gonna let up. I was soaked to my underwear, sitting at the last stoplight on Highway 65. I saw her stick out her thumb, she was a fox.
”Get on”, I yelled over the rumble of my Harley's drag pipes.
Getting situated on the step seat, she snuggled up to my back, shouting into my ear “How far north you going?”
“The range!,” I yelled back.
”Far Out!” was her reply.
Water spraying off that 21” front wheel, an hour and 50 miles north we rode into town. She yelled “I live behind that service station.”
I put the kickstand down. My joints had a hard time unlocking, I needed to stretch. My old bones had locked up from the cold, wet ride, soaked to my skin, stiff and sore. I had been riding for three hours in the rain. ”Need to find a room”, I told her.
Waiting by her door, she said “I have a better idea. I live upstairs, I owe you for the ride, come on up.”
Getting up the stairs, she escorted me down a hallway to a bathroom. “Get out of your clothes and into the shower.”
Twenty minutes later, I was finally warmed from the hot shower. Stepping out of the shower, my wet clothes and boots were gone, in their place was a terry cloth robe. At that time of my life, I wore my hair long. Another ten minutes to untangle it, I also looked around the bathroom for evidence of a man, there was none. Walking down the hallway into the living room, I found her sitting in an easy chair, legs under her, robe on and hair wrapped in a towel.
Seeing the questioning look on my face, she said, “I used my sister's shower. She lives downstairs. I put your clothes in the wash and your leathers and boots are drying in the “Hotbox”, be done in a few hours, and by the way, my name is Shirley.”
“I'm Ray,” I replied.
We sat talking in her living room- the War, Nixon, Watergate, how things were fucked up. About her brother who had both legs blown off in Vietnam. On her third trip downstairs, she came back with washed and dried jeans. I was still wearing long johns- that spring the temp was in the 50s.
After dressing, she said “Your leathers and boots need to be saddle soaped. I got a pizza ordered.”
“Far out,” I said. I hadn't ate since that morning.
”Can I ask you a question?”
“Go for it,” I said.
”Do you smoke?”
“Yeah I do.”
“I want to invite my sister Shirelle.”
When her sister sat down, Shirley hurriedly explained how I had picked her up down near the Cities on 65 when no one else would, how we got soaked in the rain, how I was a right-on dude who had some weed and that she had ordered a pizza.
The doorbell rang. She ran down the steps, returning with the pizza. I had fired that number up. Ten minutes later, the three of us had scarfed that pizza down. Not recalling much more, I fell asleep on the floor.
Waking up in the morning, CCR was still playing. The room was empty. Pulling on my leathers and boots, I stumbled out to my “tinhead”. I got lucky when she fired on the third kick and with the sun on my right I rode north. I would never see those girls again.
About twenty years later, sometime in 1990, I was in the VA Hospital for a month. In that time, I found out two things: the way I had reacted to the Vietnam War was normal, but If I didn't do something about it, other than drink and take drugs, I would soon be dead, and that the VA had this Vietnam Veterans group, along with counselors I could talk to.
”Far fuckin out!”, I said as I attended my first group, waiting for the usual 'We don't use profanity here'.
The group leader said “Whatever makes you the most comfortable, anyway and anyhow you feel like talking is fine here Mr. Earley.”
“Well then, call me “FUCKHEAD”, that's the name my Col. hung on me!!!”
For 19 years, the VA gave us a room to talk, discuss, argue, sometimes cry in. We swore, yelled, bitched about Vietnam, politicians, draft dodgers, the United States, the people we had married, buried, how much we drank, the drugs we ingested, the VA. Eventually, we began burying our buddies. Three from our group had died.
”Hey, this is gettin like fuckin Nam all over again”.
I met a vet named Bill. He was now a “Shrink”, a genuine PHD. He worked at the VA. Bill had been at Dak To (Hill 875) with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He had both legs blown off above his knees. He had used his 'Rehab' to get a PHD. In Bill's office, on the wall, hung a picture of two girls in their caps and gowns. It was Shirley and her sister Shirelle.
”My younger sisters,” Bill said. “We don't speak much- they are into their drugs.”
I kept my mouth shut, for once!
No comments:
Post a Comment