The Flowers That Grow Between - First Chapter

"... And if indeed we need to still,

those waters to the East.

We'll send our sons to impose our will,

And slay the godless beast."

                                                            -anonymous

CHAPTER ONE           

 I will never forget how I felt standing in that cold, depressing room, looking down at Joe. It had been almost five years to the day since I had last seen him. He had been my friend; he had been my hero, the one constant in my ever-changing world. The frigid waters had left his ravaged body in a hapless grotesque posture, as if one final and horrible joke had been played out on a man whose whole life had been consumed in the warmth of his family and friends.            

When they pulled his car from the Thornapple River just outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan, I wondered if anyone realized that the rigid corpse inside had once housed a soul of immense kindness and love.  Or did they have any idea that his wife and young sons lives would be covered in a shroud of sadness, a thickness no sun would ever burn through? It was wrong. It was not what a “Just God” should have allowed to happen and yet it was real, as real as the gaping hole in his right temple, the exit wound from a gunshot fired through the roof of his mouth.            

  I really didn't know that thing, that mass of flesh, blood and matted hair that lay before me.  Who I had known, was a brave and courageous man who had served not one, but two tours in Vietnam as a foot soldier and returned home. And over the ensuing twenty-seven years I came to know a man whose life was a model of generosity and kindness.  He was a heroic friend, one who helped me to survive my year of hell in Vietnam and a patient friend, who worked with me to calm the storms that those twelve months had spawned.  To stand there and think of him in the past tense was one of the single most depressing moments of my life.  Sadly, I said goodbye and made my way out of that dismal room, remembering vividly how our paths first crossed.           

 We met my first day "in country," I was an FNG, or " fucking new guy" as the veterans were fond of calling us and he was a seventeen-month veteran of the bush. We landed at Da Nang air base at three thirty in the afternoon via United Airlines. For some reason, it seemed rather odd flying coach to Vietnam.  I had never before heard of taking a commercial airliner to go to war, but then again, I guess it wasn't something the Madison Avenue types figured to be effective advertising. I don’t remember too much about the trip.  There was the usual cockiness that served as a thin veneer to the real emotion that gripped us all. .  . fear.  Fear of the unknown and fear of what we had been trained to believe about our final destination. As the hours dragged on, it became very clear to all of us that the place we had heard about from so many, for so long was about to become a reality. The silence in the aircraft’s cabin was deafening as we touched down and taxied to our unloading point.  Commands were shouted as we were hurried from the coolness of the plane's cabin, into what felt like a furnace. The hundred degrees plus temperature, combined with the humidity, was so oppressive I had a hard time just catching my breath. Acrid smelling jet fuel filled my nostrils and gave me a feeling of nausea that added to my nervousness, as the sweat poured down my face and neck soaking the front of my fatigues. A screaming sergeant soon had us in a ragged formation, marching across the airstrip to a collection of buildings to our right.  As I looked behind, I remember wishing I were back on the plane that had just delivered us to that strange land.  Minutes later, I found myself standing outside a large gray Quonset hut with about two hundred and fifty other guys waiting to be processed through. With everything that was going on around us at the time, it was all many of us could do to maintain our last ounce of bravado.  The chaotic throng of grinding machinery and shouted orders combined to push the group disposition to the edge.            

Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, the deafening roar of a medevac chopper assaulted our already raw nerve endings. The heat from the engines lashed at our faces as a bunch of GI's, fresh from the bush, laughed their asses off as our gear was blown all over camp. I watched as the aircraft seemed to hover in slow motion about three feet off the ground, while a young medic at the side door began pushing large black bags to the tarmac below. In wide-eyed amazement, we watched as each one thudded to the heated asphalt. Then, on impact, one was ripped open and what appeared to be a mangled leg, flopped out at a hideous angle. My heart stopped. They were body bags, ten or twelve heaped in a pile as the men on the ground began stacking them onto the back of a truck like so many cords of wood.            

 The heat rising from the ground was being eddied by the rotor wash as we stood there frozen, not believing the bizarre scene that was taking place and wondering just what in the hell we were getting ourselves into? My gaze was riveted on the odd shaped bags and how one stood almost upright, leaning against the others as if waiting in line for it’s turn with the base mortician.

"That's not how you want to go home," a voice shouted from behind me.           

"Follow your orders and you just might make it home alive. Welcome to Vietnam.”    

That was the very first time I laid eyes on Joe.  His facial expression said it all.  It was a hardened look of resignation that told me many of us would not make it back home alive.  Then, with a casual shrug of his shoulders and a nod of his head, he motioned for us to follow him.  And when the first day's bullshit was finished, I was fortunate enough to be placed in the same platoon with Joe. I think it probably saved my life.           

I was to be attached to the 2^nd Battalion, 9^th Marines, Charlie Company of the United States Marine Corp. based near Chu Lai, South Vietnam. Our official mission, for our presence in Vietnam, was explained to us in standard military jargon.  Our unofficial mission, the one I would be taught later, was search and destroy anything that gave us shit.  And so it was, with those unofficial orders, the youth of America was turned loose on the country of South Vietnam.           

 It was early the next morning when we were transported by convoy to Chu Lai and immediately airlifted to a hilltop about fifteen kilometers to the west. It was there that I would spend the next three months of my life, defending a huge pile of dirt for no apparent reason and getting to know my new friend Joe.             

We ran patrols together from that hilltop for days and weeks on end, looking for an enemy we could not discern from the average population.  We burned hooch’s and killed people for reasons I never knew or for that matter gave a damn about at the time.  When orders came down, we marched out single file, leaving the security of our bunkered hilltop, always wondering how many of us would make it back.  Day after day, we would patrol the bush looking for an enemy we hoped we would never find.  In late afternoon, we would hump up the highest hill and dig in for yet another night, only to empty our sandbags in the morning and repeat the process the next day. Sleep was a precious commodity and physical hardship was a way of life.  Blisters the size of half-dollars and a lower back that constantly ached, were often times the only things that reminded me that I was still alive. Sometimes on patrol, when the heat was intolerable and morale was low, not a word would be uttered for hours at a time, there was nothing to say.  And it was at those times I would look back and see Joe, giving me that stupid grin as if to say "stop worrying, you'll make it.”  And that’s when I would dig deep and push on, not wanting to let down the only person who seemed to give a damn if I lived or died. Life was hell and life was lonely. Friends were made over months and lost in seconds.   One minute you’d be kidding around with a buddy and the next thing you knew they were airlifting him out in a bag, leaving you to deal with the loss.  It was during those times, when the loneliness was suffocating, that Joe would say the right thing and make me believe that everything would be O.K.           

 I remember the times at night, as I stood my watch on yet another worthless hilltop, I would be reminded of just how far from home I really was.  It always amazed me that during a two-hour perimeter watch with forty other guys within earshot, how absolutely alone a person could feel in those jungles.  During those nights when the eyelids grew heavy and trees seemed to move, it was Joe who crawled out to keep me company and let me know that I wasn't alone.  He would talk about all of the great things waiting for us after our tour was up and we returned home.  His comments were always those of a perpetual optimist, never once admitting to the fact that he and I may not make it home alive.  How he was able to view life from such a positive perspective was beyond my comprehension.            

I've heard it said, that some of those who served in Vietnam considered it to be one of the most beautiful countries they had ever been to, I did not, nor would I ever feel that way.   I loathed every inch of that land in Southeast Asia.  I found it hard to believe that anyone who had marched where we had marched, seen what we had seen and done what we had done, could consider it any thing other than hell on earth. I was witness to or participated in more horror than a hundred men would see in a lifetime, and I could not forget. So, after twenty-four months in that country, how Joe walked away with his soul and I walked away with my own set of demons, was a profound mystery. The only answer, I guess, was the basic difference of how we viewed life. Joe viewed it as a celebration while I saw only a struggle.  So it would seem odd, that for two people with such contrasting points of view, Joe and I would end up the best of friends           

During my first couple months in Vietnam, Joe taught me how to survive.  He calmed my nerves as we lay in wait on my first ambush and stayed at my side during my first firefight.  Joe was also with me the first time that I took another human being’s life.            

My first confirmed kill was scored on our eighth patrol together and to tell you the truth, it had little effect on me at the time it happened. The fact was, for as many rounds as I’d fired from my M60 machine gun, I figured I had already killed more than I would ever want to know about. To me, they were just faceless bodies that fell somewhere in the blanket of rounds we all let fly.  If I had killed someone, there was no way to prove it was me.  I used the same rational that everyone used in Vietnam, we didn’t want to be there in the first place, so whatever happened, it wasn’t our fault.  If some innocent civilian happened to get himself killed along with the VC, that was tough shit, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

That form of perverse logic was somehow supposed to mitigate our guilt, and justify what we were doing for a living at that point in our young lives.  While our friends back home were working as carpenters, mechanics and cooks, we were learning a much different kind of trade.           

It was our third straight day in the field.  We were about four hundred meters from a tiny village when we received small arms fire coming from a tree line just to the north of it. Orders were given and a field of fire was laid down.  I was on the ground in seconds, firing two-seconds bursts where my point man was indicating.  It seemed to last only a few minutes, but when the adrenaline was pumping it was always impossible to tell just how long any combat lasted. And when it was over, we made our body count . . . there were none, so we regrouped and cautiously headed into the village.  Civilians were lined up and slapped around, as our Vietnamese interpreter hammered questions at those in charge. Because we found no signs of VC or supplies, their homes were spared the torch, and we fell back into formation leaving the frightened families behind.

We were no more than fifty meters outside the village when we began taking additional sniper fire. I saw exactly where the flash had come from and unloaded a burst from my weapon.  The body fell with only half a head not more than seventy meters from where we stood. Again, a field of fire was laid down and a sweep was made.  When the shooting finally stopped, my first thought was how soon we could get the hell out of there and back to safety. Then for some reason, a morbid curiosity was leading me to the body of the man whose life I had just ended.  With my buddies slapping me on the back and congratulating me on my accuracy, I looked down and saw the body of a boy who was no more than thirteen.  Staring down at him, I felt nothing, no rising emotion, no regret, and no guilt, just an intense desire to leave.  As I turned to go, Joe was standing there next to me.  "You all right?" he asked nervously.  I just nodded.  Our point man, who had just turned nineteen the day before, had not been so lucky, he died before the medivac arrived ten minutes later. We went back and burned the village to the ground.            

That night, back at our hilltop fortress, I experienced a horrible dream.  It was as if I was watching a movie of the day’s events and in it I relived the death of that sniper frame by frame, over and over.  Each time, I was witness to the explosion caused by the round fired from my weapon, as it impacted his forehead, flipping his body backwards. And when I looked up, I was suddenly enveloped in the smoke of a hundred fires burning all around me. I turned and fled, and as I ran, the jungle around me began transforming itself into barren mounds of rocks and smoldering timbers. Off to my right, sitting in a tower was an old man staring in my direction.  I called for help, but he just sat there watching, as the flames marched towards me. When I woke screaming with tears running down my face, Joe was sitting by my side. "You'll be all right Tom . . . You're O.K.,” he said. My body was shaking uncontrollably as I shut my eyes tightly, squeezing from them the last of the tears. "I didn't want to kill him." I said. "I know Tom, I know." he whispered, "No one wants to kill anyone."           

 By the end of my fifth month “In Country,” Joe and I had become close; we had both lost friends, we had cried together, laughed together and drank ourselves shit-faced together. We both wanted nothing more than to leave that nightmare behind and get back stateside. And when his time was getting short and I still had half my tour remaining, he convinced me that I would be going home too. He reassured me I would not be shipped home in a box like so many of our friends and he had made me promise him that I would not do anything stupid to lessen my chances of making it home in one piece.             

I cried my eyes out when he hopped aboard that chopper and flew off that worthless hilltop in the middle of the jungle, on July fourth, nineteen seventy one, headed for home. I wondered if I would ever see him again.           

Twenty-seven years later, standing there in that morgue, after having looked at Joe's broken face, I found myself trembling with an uncontrollable fear.  It was a familiar, detached sensation that I had felt so many times in Vietnam. A fear that squeezed my chest and made it difficult to breath. The feeling of impending doom, accompanied with a rush of adrenaline that left me in a readied state, fighting off the feeling of unreality that foreshadowed the sound of the first Claymore mine erupting in the distance. Not wanting to be there, but knowing there was nowhere else to go.           

 Little did I realize that my sleepy world was about to be awakened and my life would be changed forever.  Someone, or something, was watching and enjoying the scene with perverse pleasure. Why Joe had called me and begged me to come see him just two weeks prior was still a mystery and why he had died ten days later was a tragedy.  I had terrible feelings that the evil I sensed was aimed at more than just Joe.            

 As I left the morgue, the icy wind slammed the door shut behind me, jarring my thoughts back to his wife and children. They would most definitely need my support. Hurriedly, I climbed into my rented Ford Taurus, turned on the engine and set the heater to high. As I waited for the warmth to kick in, I tried desperately to comprehend the finality of the moment and realized that I needed a drink, very badly.