their only sin was being broken by war and living to tell the tale
and maybe drinking too much in futile attempts to forget
sitting too long on the bar stool or the couch
looking for a diversion or a laugh to keep the wolves at bay
failing, falling into the sorrows of one too many
memories and beers
stories and tears
except Biter, who always smiled.....
Biter
1977
His name is Granville, but we all call him Biter.
Maybe it’s the missing tooth, or maybe he bit someone once, but I never asked. He is
the quiet type, the guy always ready to party, laughing often, talking little
needing little, having little, living off his disability pension from the war. He is
always ready with a smile, or a helping hand for a friend. He would have the
occasional quiet lapse and we leave him be.
He never takes his shirt off, no matter how hot, not even to swim.
He doesn’t want us to see the scars. He doesn’t want to talk about them or the war.
He won’t tell you about his time in Vietnam. He doesn’t talk about it, ever, and that says a lot right there.
The story was he was on patrol, and one of his buddies stepped on a land mine. Biter was the third in line and the only one who didn't come home in a box.
He moved to Florida where he works occasionally, manual labor, hard work, but in the sun. He’s still smiling.
******
John
1981
Crusty wrinkly caricature of a cowboy,
right down to the dirty Marlboro Man attire and Stetson hat pulled low, missing half a finger, smoking a Pall Mall as he hops creakily from his Jeep. A real genuine cowboy, whose dream ranch perched on a meadow between the tree line and the river on the Bighorn Mountains in Wyoming. Moose and horses in his yard wander freely, only the moose have the reach to jump the cattle bridge in the driveway. John was short but strong, rugged, a real pioneer. He ran a huge cattle ranch off the mountain with his brother, but he preferred the solitude and few residents of Burgess Junction, 12,000 feet above it all, where I spent that summer. There were three bar/gas/motel/lodges triangulated around the strategic road to Yellowstone, and I worked at all three before the season ended. I begged for a job studying wildlife diversity with the Forest Service, but competition was fierce. So I worked as a serving wench instead. John Kukuchka would hang at the bars at the mountain top, and none but the regulars knew him to be one of the richest guys for miles, he looked to the tourists like he could barely afford a beer. When I began to work at his favorite bar, Bear Lodge, the darkest, coziest, bearskin decorated, one pool table and a jukebox slice of heaven, I got to know him quite well. But I can't tell you about John without painting some background. A summer in the mountains, the color of the sky, the sound of the rivers, the buttes in the sunset, the wildflowers, the stars, they still haunt me. Barbed wire lines this land, and the roads are bisected by cattle gates that keep the investments in place. The occasional deer or antelope jump to a slow death on the wires, gruesome to see, stark and visceral in contrast to the glorious scenery.
Up high, you meet the real people, the genuine articles. The ranchers, cattle and sheep, would bring the stock up to graze for the summer. The loggers would come in and clear the forest, huge swaths of clearcut, sad but necessary, and the hoedad hippies would come behind in their groovy van and replant and live as one with the earth in a happy circle of life. The USFS gang was there to enforce, maintain, study wildlife diversity and their favorite adrenaline rush, fight fire. There’s always a fire in the mountains. I learned that when the first lodge I was waiting, cooking, bussing and cleaning at burned to the ground. (practically an indentured servant, I worked 6 days, 10 hours for room and board and $100 a month) My first week they made me skip my only day off, because there were only 3 employees and the youngest quit in tears. This place was rough but I was tough, and I learned how fierce I could become when threatened that summer. I spent a night huddled in the back bed of the employee bunk room with a terrified 14 year old girl who wanted to go home while Roy, the drunken brother of the owner banged on the locked bedroom door begging, then demanding we let him in. I yelled right back at him until he let us be. I realized then, that I was in a very different, wild place, where the old rules did not apply. I was grabbed, hugged, fought off kisses from several men, until I reached my break point when Ken, the owner, found me alone in the kitchen washing dishes. He rubbed up against my back, fondled my ass and told me how nice it was. He did not see the knife I was washing, and I silently spun around and pointed the knife at his throat and said very quietly If you ever touch me again, I swear to God I will kill you, and returned to washing my dishes. Ken assured me this was all a misunderstanding, there was no need to get all riled up over nothing. I said nothing.
I had come from Delaware by way of West Virginia on a Greyhound bus with my boyfriend, the trip took forever, two hellish days. Unforgettable Chicago arising in the dawn mist, unforgettable little girl, bored, needy, dirty, her dad trying to get his shit together and find a new methadone clinic, getting her away from her fucked up mom who couldn't kick the heroin, he said. We played peek a boo over the seat, that little girl and I, far beyond my patience. So the mean mountain boss didn’t scare me. But the point is, the place burnt to the ground on my first night off after three weeks, when I grabbed my pack, bag and tent and hoofed it through a thunderstorm to get the hell out of there for every minute I had coming. We were out of supplies, had no guests at the hotel and I was asked repeatedly by Roy if I was sure I was going camping. The fire started about 2 in the morning, and the Forest Rangers fought the fire, to no avail. All my stuff that wasn’t on my back was in that fire, which really sucked. Ken and Roy didn't seem to be too upset, so I guess they had insurance.
I moved on to the next lodge, where they took me on as a maid, a job I knew and hated well. They had no room for another employee, but gave me a spot in the campground. John, my cowboy in shining armor, offered me a place to stay and he barely knew me and he wanted nothing in return. He was being neighborly. I said yes, I had spent two weeks in a tent and was weary for a bed. Later, when we became friends, I'd try to return all his favors with a friendly ear, an open heart and a pat on the arm. I could only pat his arm because hugs were dicey - he might have been in his 60’s but he was still a horny old man. He used to threaten me with that stump of a finger and tell me I was too little and too young to screw, but if he was gonna give me anything, that stump would be all I got, but I was too scrawny to be worth even that much. I laughed at him and said shut up John. He told me that when he was driving me down the mountain, which is no small trip, to Sheridan to the thrift store to buy some clothes and shoes because he knew my story. He knew me as the quiet waitress from the other place that burnt down before he knew me as his bartender at the next one. He lent me some money, which I repaid. He took me to lunch and I let him. Later, he let me ride the range with him and mend fence, and he gave me a cowshit and dust covered Stetson, which I cherish still. We became friends. He let me and my boyfriend stay with him at his house, We ate the trout from his stream for breakfast, he proudly fed us elkburgers he hunted and dressed hisself. Better than any cow, he said. We watched mama moose in the morning teach her baby to jump free of his yard. We would cook and talk together while we watched the bighorns or coyotes in the rocky ridge out his huge windows, while the glazed eyes of trophy game watched from the walls. He’d tell us about the changes he’s seen over the years. He liked us because we appreciated the land and we weren’t afraid of it and didn’t screw it up, and we treated him with respect. And I think he thought we were amusing maybe, easterners - Delaware of all places. What the hell.
He had a million stories when he was sober, he’d seen it all. But when he had one drink too many he had but one story. I cried with him when he told me the first time and all I could offer was a pat on the arm, like I said. I was 21, I didn’t know the half of what he’d survived. I was more obsessed with Vietnam than WWII, maybe because my Dad arrived after the cease fire but before the peace treaty. Anyway, I knew all about fragging and napalm and friendly fire and booby traps and wires from my friend Jim and the entire shelf of books and memoirs from my town library. But my WWII was high school rusty. I didn't know shit about Normandy.
John had been on the landing boats the day they stormed Normandy. The day that fear ate him alive, he was forced on command to run screaming into roiling water over his head, bearing pounds of ammo and supplies that buckled his knees under their weight. The beach was too crowded and under heavy attack from machine guns and the boats were forced to drop their doors farther out. John survived near drowning, clawed his way to shore and managed to live through the bloody battle on the beach where soldiers were picked off mercilessly by enemy fire. He would look at me with those ancient blue watery eyes, fear and horror and sorrow and guilt jumping frantically in his gaze. He looked like a kid crying from confusion and pain after a lost ice cream, only John was an old man who lost his friends and his innocence. John always went right there, to the boat and the dropping gate and everything that followed, and it had been 40 years. It broke him and it haunted him and he drank to run from it but it followed him there, to the bar in Bear Lodge in the Bighorns with the little lady from the east coast serving him PBR’s and whiskey shots. And he would tell me with tears in his eyes that I couldn’t imagine what it was like, and I’d answer with tears in mine that I know, I couldn't. I was so sorry for what war did to him, and I knew I had nothing to offer but a pat on the arm and a beer. I wish ... I wish I could remember a fraction of his stories, I mostly remember the one. I hope I said thanks for all he gave for his country, I wish he knew I never ever forgot him.
******
Jim
1982
I thought I knew all about Vietnam - I grew up during the war, it ended with my adolescence, I studied it in college, I thought I knew something but I met Jim and found out otherwise. Jim. The best and scariest mailman I ever knew. Long blonde hair, dark blue eyes, quick and alert, almost jumpy at times, hot, muscular legs poking out of blue mailman shorts, easily hiking the hilly streets of Morgantown, West by God Virginia, though with a slight limp. Scars mostly covered by shorts, he would say only that he got his leg blown up pretty good in Nam. Government job was therapy for the leg, what the hell. He would stop by, chat, occasionally smoke a joint or have a drink before he walked on his way.
I had followed a boy there, switched colleges to be with him, the same one I followed to the mountains of Wyoming. I was in love and I would have followed him to the ends of the earth, because I wanted to marry adventure, and he was an adventure boy. All forest ranger firefighters were adventure boys. So that is how I came to West by God Virginia, and how I came to know Jim. His arrival with the mail was like having company, and I loved talking with him.
One day Jim arrived to find me sitting, despondant in my only dress, a gauzy lavender layered sundress, that I wore especially for Gary's birthday. I baked a cake in our tiny kitchen shared with Dan and the other Gary and the cat. Gary did not come home that day, he stayed at another girl's dorm, the girl he never told me he was seeing before I left everything to move to West Virginia with him. What was there to say. Bad mistake, moving there alone to be with a man who was staying with the other woman, stuck until the semester ended, trapped. Jim was kind, sympathetic without judgement, and he sat with me a while and we talked about nothing and everything. I loved Jim, for trying to be normal when his life was crazy, for trying to be a dad and a husband to his silent wife in the hills, for surviving.
I was scared of Jim too, because of the stories he told me. I knew he was a crazy mountain man scout at the end of the war. He liked to take point, he hunted and killed gooks like sport. For hate. He signed back up because being home made no sense after you'd collected enemy ears for trophy. He told stories of new meat straight from the academy, in country and in charge, clueless, sure to get them killed. Frag em, what the hell, kill or be killed. Jim was intent on coming home when the war ended. Well tossed grenades under fire fixed the problem and quick. It took vigilance and a few good friends to stay alive, friendlies were hard to identify, accidents happened, friendly fire, children wired to blow when you gave them candy, things were not as they seemed. Things were terrible wrong, even for war. All the books I'd read, none came close to Jim's stories.
Here's one.
Rape was common, constant, but most men knew where to draw the line between woman and girl and one crazy fuck liked the real little ones. I mean really little, Jim said. It was sick. We warned him to stop but he wouldn't fucking listen so a bunch of us strung him up one day and cut off his nuts. That fixed his problem real good.
Jim would tell a story like this, get a look in his eye and change the subject to something mundane, like ramp season coming up or his latest batch of moonshine.
Now here, back home in the mountains, he was our friend and we were his. We would come out to help chop and cord wood for the winter, and after the work and the meal, we would drink his moonshine and peach brandy and his wife would tend to us and the baby as he told new stories, evidence that the war had never left him. How he set bear trap for the thieves who would try to rob him in the night, and he let them scream a while when he caught them because nobody could hear and he figured they deserved it, and were lucky he didn't just shoot them, because what the hell. They were huckleberries, the lowest caste in the hills and thieves to boot. It made him laugh, this revenge, the hillbilly traps around his perimeter. He was done being fucked with. He did his time, and he just wanted to deliver the mail now, watch his baby grow with his silent wife, and make moonshine and hunt ramps in the spring, deer in the fall. Maybe have a drink and a laugh around the fire with some friends. But.
I knew the look on Jim's face and his dead scary eyes when he snapped back to the war, when he became an animal that saw only threat when one night I walked into the kitchen too quietly and startled him from his thoughts. My instincts made me freeze into place, because Jim's eyes were not his eyes, but the eyes of a soldier, a predator, a man in fear, and I was prey for seconds that ticked very slowly as I pondered backing up or running, but I froze, like a deer in headlights until, finally Jim breathed out and shook and said Fuck. Mel. Don't ever do that again.
I knew he fought back demons I could only imagine. I had read countless memoirs of the war and thought I understood the horror, but Jim made the insanity and inhumanity of it come to life right before my eyes. And yet, he was kind.
Jim, my mountain man mailman friend who saw me for me, and talked with me, shared his stories for me to listen and nod and bear witness to his truth. We shared each others stories, though I had but a few, and some I'd never tell. They paled in the light of Jim's truth.
I hope he's still out there, making moonshine and trying to live the good life, and maybe leave his demons behind.
Update, 2014
From Laura Hillenbrand, author of Unbroken:
The last paragraph of "Unbroken" reads: "Finally, I wish to remember the millions of Allied servicemen and prisoners of war who lived the story of the Second World War. Many of these men never came home; many others returned bearing emotional and physical scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they sacrificed, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book is dedicated."
