Do You Know Your Lines?

By Oren Hays

A positive journey of two front-line EVAC nurses returning from Vietnam, the center of madness. They return to reclaim their virtues, dysfunctional families, and delicate microcosms of religious faith. A textured portrait of the imprecise structures they ran away from three years ago, now possessing a graphic glue eclipsing that which they were before.

Two feisty, amusing, feminine rebels whose middle age crisis came early, their lassitude poignantly, gradually replaced by a quixotic sense of future. A vigorous, affirmative character analysis of transition of spirit.

DO YOU KNOW YOUR LINES?, a metaphor asking, do you know what to say at that moment in our lives when words almost fail; do fail? Why? Because we may be emotionally bankrupt; willpower, alone, no longer able to return us to those graceful, idealistic, delicious times before fatigue and confusion penetrated deeply into our being.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 31, 2002
• ISBN: 9781462825592

Oren Hays

Oren Hays emigrated from Los Angeles, California to Las Cruces, New Mexico in 1980. Diverse careers, U.S. Navy, singing, acting, and real estate entrepreneur, all made for ideal story telling venues. Submerged in the writing life of a southwestern city infected with prominent writers, has been a privilege and joy. The is his first novel.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

There comes a time, usually after losing your third or fourth 19 year old in the eleventh hour of a twelve hour shift, the seventh in a row, when staring into a blood killing wound everything goes black and white. Why? Well, it’s as if no one is sure if they dream in color or not. This must be a dream, it must be black and white, it must be out of focus. It must for there are no more tears to blur the horror of it all.

If the center of Meagan Casey were put under a microscope you would see she had turned from coal to diamond, soft to shattered, gentle to ‘what the hell’.

No longer able to lift an arm, or hand to brush back her fallen hair, she watched another dying boy’s face relax and release its last frozen grimace. Oozing blood quit its rush to escape. The chest quivered no longer. Somewhere back home one more Marine green vehicle stopped at an address, pulled from a file, to say how sorry we are, but he will always be remembered by the Corps.

Meagan’s trance remained intact as she walked to her hootch, arrived without remembering the doing, and stood at its entrance unable to perform the simple task of opening the door. Alice Tipton sensed footsteps approaching that should have continued. It was an attempted silent entrance they both tried and failed at, each aware of the other’s need for rest. Alice crept to the door, opened it and discovered a pale, wide-eyed, confused Meagan.

What’s the matter, babe, the morgue full?

PART I

DON‘T MEAN NOTHIN’

CHAPTER ONE

Meagan Casey stretched hard and got a cramp in the calf of her leg. She bolted upright, grabbed her toes and pulled back hard. She vaguely remembered a nightmare ofendless wounded, countless bandages, unnumbered operations, masses of faces, infinite bravery, incalculable severed limbs in boxes full to overflowing, incomprehensible deaths, perpetual screams, and the eternal longing to hold one more hand while saying, It’s alright kid, you’ll make it. Some did, but for too many they made it only as far as a coffin.

She must have fallen asleep again because now upon waking her room was dark. Familiar sounds filtered through the numbness. Choppers were passing through or over or landing. Whispers of voices, hushed responses, beer cans popping, giggles prompting, Not there tweep, there. Well, she knew she hadn’t passed over anyway. She was still trapped in near hell with all the other lonely bastards. Well, shit my sweet, I thought you forgot how to split an infinitive. Now, slow lover mine, and savor the juice. Who knows when it will flow again. It sounded as ifAlice had a bunkmate. Sleep arrived one more time.

A sliver of sun slanted through the cracked hootch door and pushed open first one eyelid, then the other. Why weren’t they calling her to duty? Was the war over? Shit no! Was she ill? Her hand found her face. No fever. In fact she felt cold to the touch. She had to pee, but why? She hadn’t eaten in so long she could not remember the last time. My God, my ribs! The screen door of the hootch banged closed.

My, my it’s alive. How was R and R? said friend Alice.

Where am I? Who am I? What am I?

Ok, slut, in that order you are in Camp Wanamaka, your name is Easy Frieda, and you’re a camp counselor for many, many pimple faced virgins who have just had their first period and think they’re playing Macbeth, ‘Out damned spot’.

The sun’s glare behind the face made it blank, but the voice left no possible doubt it was titillating Tipton, master of masterful things such as how to have an orgasm with no help except by inspired imagery.

Have the little bastards got all the potatoes peeled?

No, my sweet. They’re practicing bobbing for apples while naked and tightening their sphincter muscles so no ugly unwanted thing can enter the kingdom of teenage heaven unless invited.

Have they learned how to make their nipples stand out even when not cold?

Oh yeah, and tomorrow they move on to dildos, vibrators and first digits.

These improvisations sometimes went on for hours, the ultimate escape for ravaged minds. When you’ve spent an entire twelve hour shift scrubbing out clear-through gunshot wounds with the equivalent of a Brillo pad, your mind will jump sideways to blot out the gore. They had to get the dirt out, the worms out, the shrapnel, the filth. And the guys waiting their turn, well, they heard, sometimes they saw and they wanted to run away, but there was no place to run—even if they could.

Second Class Petty Officer Amos McCoy awoke, he slept, he awoke again, he slept again. When he thought he was awake he did not seem able to move. When he was asleep, he also was unable to move. How was this possible? Staring at the water stain above his head he realized he must be alive. Why else would this stain so resemble a wide V, a triangle apex with hair, a ribbon of pink in complete center view? Death and sex all in the space ofone thought?

Hi there, sailor. So you finally woke up. Had us worried, fella. How ya feelin’?

He thought he said just fine, but she didn’t respond. God, she smelled good.

Hey, that’s ok. Your body’s been through a lot. I’ll see what I can find for you to eat. How about a milk shake? What flavor?

Chocolate, I love chocolate.

Let’s do this. Blink your eyes once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’. So, how about strawberry?

I can’t talk? I can’t move? Blink my eyes, that’s it? That’s all I can move. What the fuck happened to me?

Ok, chocolate? No—then vanilla, or guava or mint or coffee or-. Screw this, I’ll get chocolate, cause if you don’t—I will. Be back in a mo.

Blink, blink, you screwy broad. I mean blink, yes, chocolate. Where’d she go? Aw shit! How’d that song go? ‘Time on my hands’—have I got hands? ‘You in my arms’—one—maybe—just one?

Well, McCoy, there’s one thing that isn’t broken, and Doc Riley will be glad to hear it. That’s got to be the biggest boner I’ve ever seen on a guy that can’t move. Down boy, down. Oops, here comes help, I’ll drink the shake.

He tried to smile, but he had no idea if he did. Boner? What the hell’s she talking about?

Hi Amos, I’m Doctor Riley. Good news. If you can rise up like that, chances are your spinal cord is only bruised. We’ll have you up in a wheel chair ASAP. You hang in there kid. A few more days and over to Japan for some fine-line surgery on those legs. Gees, that really is a fine piece of china, bone china that is.

My legs—what about my legs? Wait a fuckin’ minute. A night drop. Yeah, that was it. 10,000 foot silent insurgency drop—Seal team. That’s it, I’m a fuckin’ Seal. Light went to gray then black. The richness of his pain trotted away with one last thought of a chocolate milk shake six feet tall in a frosted glass with one humongous red cherry nestled in whipped cream as white as a nun’s habit.

Amos was beginning to find out why they called it Hell week. They said, this is where we separate the girls from the boys, the boys from the men, leaving a select few the right to ultimately be called, ‘warrior’. This week occurs the sixth week of a 25 week training schedule, a hazing ritual that discriminates, as ruthlessly as possible, the determined from the doubtful. The hazing, lack of sleep, and stresses are designed to push the mind and body to limits unimaginable only a short time ago. They used to call it ‘motivation week, but Hell was substituted so often surviving Hell sounded more accurate for those who made it.

The cold, the hypothermia from water 50 to 60 degrees that swelled joints and loosened toenails until they floated away. Feet rarely out of wet boots for fear you couldn’t put them back on again. Sand in your armpits and between your legs rubbed skin raw until meat showed. Soon the gorilla walk began. Legs bowed, arms held away from the body resembling the great silver-back at the San Diego Zoo. And the boat, the forever with us, God damn boat. They called it our dinghy. We rowed in it, slept in it, fell out of and into it, sometimes ate and peed in it. We shoulder pressed its 180 pounds when we failed, and puked in it when salt water and potato salad failed to mix in it. We rowed 15 miles in three hours, then dug a pit in the sand big enough to bury it. We kept rubbing our heads while carrying it until we quivered with pain. We ran with stress fractures while lugging it, and we yelled HOO YAH from under it every five minutes of a 15 minute scheduled sleep to prove we weren’t asleep. Eight boats, eight men to a boat, and if a man dropped out, those left still carried their God damn, mother fuckin’ boat. Only team spirit saved some. Amos was one of the strongest. His five foot eight inch frame suffered with the rest, but quitting never entered his mind. Without even a vote he became the team leader.

As a kid he was such a heller he was placed in a military school at age thirteen. His family had given up on him. He showed no respect for traditional values, family loyalty, social or religious morals. He was headed for jail so fast his dad gave him one last chance, and threatened, If this doesn’t work, well then, punk that you are, just live with your self because no one else can or wants to any longer.

And it worked. Not right away, but after his first broken nose, two black eyes due to a smart mouth, scrubbing 300 feet of hallway for the fourth time and 83 tooth brushes later, he finally found something he wanted more than anything else. He wanted to jump out of an airplane. He wanted to scream like the eagle he thought he was, knowing his parachute would yank him back to reality. He wanted to shout to all the mythic Gods that he feared no man, no mountain, no tiger, and without even having heard of wax wings he could fly to the sun and not be burned. If he didn’t survive, then what the hell, no one had understood him anyway, including himself.

He made his first jump at fourteen, and by the time four years of military school had beaten him into stainless steel, he was cadet leader of the whole fucking place. He led his graduating class in review before the old and new cadets, barely able to remember the smart-ass kid he was four years ago.

Now, two years later, having found a home in the navy, he was up to his ass in alligators again. Two men in his crew quit and there were no substitutes. They finished last in a 15 mile row and were told to do it again. But first they must do 100 pushups, 100 sit-ups, and 50 shoulder presses with their gray beast, the boat.

His worst enemy was not the squad of goons who inflicted their never ending punishments. It was his ever present, never gone, shit eatin’ grin. No matter how bad he felt, no matter how hard he tried to look serious, no matter how ripped he was about punishment from his dad, the military school, boot camp, or now this school for killers, he could not erase the upturned, born with, creases in his cheeks that everyone interpreted as a God damn, smart-ass, shit eatin’ grin. He’d started Hell Week at 160 pounds of bench pressed muscle. Now he wasn’t sure. He felt shorter, definitely minus a lot of skin, his feet had no feeling, his once bulging biceps were as flat as tires—the air, the strength of his youth gone and seemed unlikely to return. Only protruding ribs and a sunken belly remained where once stood rows of rock hard stomach muscles that danced for any Betty or Sheila. And the bone of contention that delighted them all would never rise up and point ever again. He was stripped of every value he and his once beautiful body ever possessed.

As the six of them finished the 50th boat press and collapsed into pitiful lumps of clay, he remembered they still had to repeat the 15 mile row. A voice in his ear began, ever so softly, to extol what a miserable piece of shit he was: How did a mama’s boy ever get it into his head he could be a warrior Seal? Why, he probably liked boys better than girls anyway. God damnit McCoy, you probably liked your mama so much you slept with her because that’s as close to a real titty as you’ll ever get. Why, if there was a naked woman here on a blanket with her legs wide open you wouldn’t know what to do with her, you slime headed, dickless chicken shit, you—you—you son-of-a-bitch, you broke my fuckin ‘ nose.

His eyes were glued shut with sand, but if he could just get to the icy water he’d be alright. He yelled into the dark of day for the other slime heads to get the fuckin’ boat moving. Slowly he felt the cold comfort of San Diego Bay water lapping up his legs. Groans and every swear word ever created flowed from his crew. He fell down in the waves and let them sweep his eyes and ears clean. He could see again, but he was unable to float the fuckin’ boat. He stood up, staggered to keep his balance realizing he was slowly being led back to shore, the boat too.

Great peals of laughter reached out to him. The strong arm that was dragging him along seemed to belong to someone he knew. The bastard had his other hand up to his face and was laughing so hard he almost fell with the two of them. Mercifully he was pushed into their boat and told to stay there. Other warm, cold bodies sagged into the boat, and nothing but wind and laughter flowed through the wet, cold, soggy air. Finally he could see well enough to recognize the goon squad, every fuckin’ one of them, lined up in a neat row.

Seaman McCoy and crew. We are proud to announce that you miserable fuckin’ slime heads have successfully completed the required motivational week of training. And because you, Seaman McCoy, are the first slime head to ever break a goon’s nose while being administered a motivational pep talk into a sand filled ear, you are hereby sentenced to pay for six rounds of drinks at the establishment of our choosing. HOO YAH—class dismissed.

On the third day Meagan rose from her damp, smelly, mildewed bed and advanced to the pee place. An improvised pee place that spouted printed rules of conduct at squat level. Thou shalt dispose of thine own pee. Thou shalt be forgiven in time of death bed sickness only. And if thou thinks thine own shit does not stink, woe be the son-of-a-bitch who pees and shits and leaves to ferment. Thine own bed shall be baptized whether thou are in it or not:. Signed—Current Management. It was faded and hard to read.

As she stood, her casual glance showed she had surely began to rust. Left in her own juices for three days, it appeared her small reserve of iron was dribbling away. Her first conscious pee in unnumbered days had produced a reddish brown sap squeezed through a bladder long out of use.

Her watch said two o’clock. Peeking through split fingers at cracks around the hootch door she deduced it to be 1400 hours or that was one hell of a moon out there.

Oh my God! Out there! She repeated it again. Could she go ‘out there’ ever again? Her second tour had two months to go. At this moment it seemed a life time. Flashes of images began to pop in and out of view—all tinged in red. Was it bloodshot eyes or just blood? Though the temperature was surely near l00 degrees, she began to shiver. It started in her feet, inched its way up

to her crotch and what was left of her butt. A convulsive twitch began as a motor not wanting to start, sputtering and coughing, trying to fire itself into life, but receiving no fuel, no gas, no ignition. Then, just in time an old song began to vibrate in her temples. The loudness choking back and down and away the slow shake that had almost engulfed her. ‘That old black magic has me in its spell’—yes and all the rest—the witchcraft part—that’s exactly what it was.

She shook her head, her matted hair throwing droplets of sweat as if a boxer taking a blow. The hootch door flew open letting in the shrill sun and with it a shadow flailing its arms as if burnt to a twitch it could not control. She stood there, her first blissful thought replaced by an incoherent waggling, shrieking being who resembled someone she had known somewhere.

Son-of-a-bitch, it’s alive. It was Alice. Christ, you look almost dead. I’ve seen corpses that looked better that you. Fall down, please. A hand planted itself between Meagan’s boobs and pushed her gently to the bed.

"You’re not gonna believe what just happened. Truth is I saw it and I don’t believe it either. I’m down on the beach playing volley ball with the guys and gals. We’re boozin’, grabbin’ an ass here, a boob there, when all at once this MEDVAC chopper starts coughing on approach. For a hairy minute it looked like he is gonna crash on the net and us with it. Then wham, the engine caught, he lifted up a little and swung out over the water. For ten seconds we‘re all feelin‘ good, and then that bastard just fell straight down and crashed two hundreds yards off shore.

„Am I on duty?"

„Aw, shut up and listen. Guys hit the water and start swimming out towards the chopper. Another MEDVAC, he‘s empty, sees the problem, but Christ, he can‘t do nothin‘ but hover. Then the weirdest thing happens. We see sharks headed for the crash. There‘s five or six heads bobbin‘ and man they‘re gonna be gone-gone in a twinkle. We’re all screamin’ and yellin’. The guys who started swimming from the beach don’t know what to do now.

Some tread water, some head back, the MEDVAC flies real low trying to scare’em away, aw shit-fire Meg, it’s a disaster."

Are you trying to cheer me up?

Yeah, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna, just listen. Now, all of a sudden the MEDVAC lifts up. Where the fuck’s he goin’? He comes over the beach and lands. The crew bails out, runs to the water line screamin’ all the way, They ‘re not sharks, they ‘re dolphins, a whole juckin ‘ school of them. They ‘re pushin ‘ and pullin ‘ the guys to shore, Christ, even the wounded. It’s true, Meg, it’s true, there really is a God. Damnit Meg, those dolphins had the guys holdin’ on to their dorsal fins, and just pretty as you please they brought those six guys into shore and I mean clear in. They almost beached themselves. They yipped and squeaked and turned over to get their bellies scratched, aw gee Meg, it was beautiful.

Alice sat there exhausted from the experience, the telling, the horror and beauty all entwined. Her face was etched in a semi-frozen smile with one tear on each cheek drawing a line in the salted, sandy dirt blown up by the landing chopper. Her trance was real, her spirit enriched, she was tingling all over. A pleasant chill spread over Meagan. She reached out not knowing if she should touch Alice or not. Half way through the move Alice grabbed the offered hand and pulled herself to Meagan. In one quick move she crumpled over and buried her head in Meagan’s lap and gentle sobs shook through her. The echo of Alice’s last phrase still hung in the air. Aw gee Meg, it was beautiful.

Abner McCoy sat in the rain, his M-16 pointed down, the barrel tip sheathed in plastic to perhaps stop the ever present galloping rust. Drops the size of quarters hammered every inch of him. Collectively the rain drops beat out, ‘There’ll be blue birds over the white cliffs of Dover, tomorrow, just you wait and see’. A World War II ballad whose only relevance in this sucking vegetable rampage of nature was the remembrance of a quiet bed

time lullaby amidst a summer evening thunder storm when, long ago, fear of the unknown battled the sandman for the attention of one eight year old boy.

His father, one of fourteen brothers, often hummed or sang that mysterious song to him at bedtime. Abner was old enough, at the time, to sense the love, yet young enough not to know its origins or the memorable influence it would have on a man who could barely carry a tune.

The ages of Abner’s eight sisters always seemed to leave, at least, one child ofa year that father’s stories and songs still soothed and quieted. Mother was more pragmatic and thankful for a doctor who understood the fears of repeating the number fourteen just because fierce love seemed to beget again and again.

The last time Abner was home, just before he was sent to Vietnam, he heard the soft notes of mellow love float down from his six year old sister’s room. Julia was ill with chickenpox, and even though she was covered with calamine lotion, only father’s deep baritone would finally seal shut eyes and ears and stop her little body from twitching.

Abner sat with his back against a tree to bullet proof at least part of his body. Arriving shortly after the Tet offensive, he was thrown into a unit whose sole purpose was search and destroy. The Viet Cong were no longer an effective force, but the North Vietnamese regulars made up the difference.

Combat was endless hours of