The Helicopter                 

3,344 wds          

In memory of Frank Saracino (1949-1969)

    Brother Dan picked up the helicopter and turned it in his hand. His lips made no chopping engine noises, nor did he bank and turn, recreating the shivering, slicing, ear piercing racket of the door gunner blasting Charlie Cong in a rice paddy. Dan was serious; he was in the United States Army.

“Looks good,” he said. “Let’s blow it up.”

It took us hours to glue the model chopper together and paint it; it looked bold ~ powerful, resting on the bookcase. I myself often imagined this Huey gun-ship skimming the treetops of Vietnam, swooping in to drop troops in a secure LZ.  Now to destroy it! Long ago we grew out of blowing up our models and now Brother Dan, home on leave from Bragg, suggested we take a step backward. Later we discovered his point of view reflected a more complete and accurate awareness of actual conditions. 

“I’m kidding,” Dan said,  “I wouldn’t hurt your little piece of shit.”

Shit he called it! Again we were too stunned to think or speak.

Dan tossed the chopper onto the bookcase so rough the skids or the blades could have broken.    

The model and the army our father loved so much lost something. Our father turned old, our interest faded and now in Dan’s shadow we would learn the truth about our nation’s newest war. 

The old man was now burdened with defending the new war. They agreed only once, when Dan said, “It’s the same fucking war. We never stopped fighting it.” The suddenness and confidence of his comment, spiked with a forbidden word,  surprised us, the old man most of all. We heard strength ~ certainty, in Dan’s statement; it swept aside an ideal. We waited, watched the strain in our father’s face looking directly at Dan.

“That’s true, the bastards are still out there,” he said.

We waited. 

“We’ll always be fighting it,” our father said.  

They would not agree again on anything until the war was long over. 

One month later, learning he would be shipped out to Vietnam, Dan went AWOL. He felt justified; he enlisted instead of being drafted because, his recruiter told him, enlistees could choose their post and Dan had taken a sudden interest in German culture. AWOL means Absent With Out Leave and in the face of the enemy, it is desertion, punishable by death. The enemy, however, was far away, not in our faces and we only saw them on television, as corpses. We now worried about our brother standing before a firing squad.

We were not concerned that Dan was a coward. He had told us the army and the war were “Mickey Mouse.” By that time, seven years into the war, refusing to fight had become an act of courage. He went AWOL in open defiance of the United States government and now that was okay.

Our father turned to us, Dan’s younger brothers, and said, “Dan and i are talking, you people are dismissed.”

 We would learn they discussed the importance and implications of Dan’s decision. The next morning they drove downtown and Dan boarded a bus to Laramie to visit his college friends. At dinner that night our father delivered a lecture on the importance and seriousness of abiding by an oath freely given. “A man’s word is his bond,” he said. 

Our father was physically shaken, his voice trembled a little as he told us he had called military authorities at the F E Warren Air force Base nearby to report the whereabouts of his AWOL son. “This is my duty,” he said. He was shaken, yes, but also a bit smug.

A few days later an Air Policeman from F E Warren knocked on our door. He asked our mother if Dan was “currently domiciled on the premises.”  

She said, "What do you mean by that?" although she knew and was only stalling, making room to think. 

"Is he here?" the AP asked. 

She said no, he had left and she didn’t know where he went or when he might come back. She turned to me. I shrugged my shoulders and said nothing. I had been to Laramie many times and knew Dan’s friends and where they lived. 

My other brother, Art, two years older than me, who rarely went to Laramie and knew nothing about where Dan could be, refused to say anything.

Art loved and admired Dan and now hated the war. He never lost his love of the weapons and machinery.

At the time i didn’t notice that this Air Policeman was about Dan’s age, from another part of the country, judging by his accent, and probably did not, as an airman, care about arresting an AWOL army PFC. He carried a gray walkie-talkie and gestured with it as he talked, as if he wanted us to see it  and know he could call for reinforcement.

After the AP left Art brooded on the pigs. Dan had told him, “Today’s pig is tomorrow’s bacon,“ and he often repeated the statement. Refusing to get a haircut, he was meeting harsh resistance at home and school. He never wore a hat; a hat makes you bald. He had to oil or wet his curly hair flat in the morning when he left for school and in the afternoon when he came home so no one would notice the length of it. After leaving home he puffed it out to ride over his ears and again smoothed it down approaching school. Art also disliked how much his nostrils flared so he often squeezed his nose and inhaled sharply to keep them pressed in and thin like Dan’s nose. All this fiddling with his hair and nose gave me the impression Art’s hands were constantly flittering around his head. 

Hair didn’t concern me. A friend had given me a box of books his father had placed out by the house incinerator (trash was routinely burned in these incinerators, blocks of cement  with a hole in the top and a hatch in front from which garbage men shoveled the ashes), all the books mysteries or espionage thrillers. I carried a book and talked about dark and important secrets. Knowledge would protect me. I was a spy.

Dan returned a few weeks later, filled a backpack and hitchhiked north for Canada. We didn’t hear from him for a month or more, then we received a letter. Dan wrote from the stockade at Fort Carson, Colorado. He had been apprehended at the Canadian border, returned to Bragg and transferred out of the 82nd and posted to Ft. Carson.

Art and i were pissed off. Art shouted and stomped around, i remained calm. Dan always seemed capable of taking care of himself, now this; my brother locked up. What we really needed was not noisy rage but the cool perspective and proven skills of an international secret agent. This agent would get himself locked up in the same stockade, but that was his game. Once inside he would quickly locate Dan and escape with him. “Don’t ask me who i am, just keep your head down and do as i say!” Who would undertake such a hazardous mission and why? Dan never had, yet might someday have, an impact on international events. Dan is just an ordinary guy who didn’t do well in school so he joined the army to avoid the draft. Unless they know something we don't, which is entirely possible since Dan has been away for more than a year, a breakout could be necessary.  

Money was needed most. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be enough. This would allow me to fake my death, (as James Coburn did in Duffy) assume a new identity, change my looks with plastic  surgery, contact the agent and make arrangements for the escape caper. Afterwards, i could reappear to my family as a new person. They would still be recovering from the loss of their youngest son ( the old me) and would be glad to take in as their own the new me, seeing how sophisticated i was in my double breasted gray suit, pressed slacks, silk shirt and tie with a large knot. They would be surprised but accept me smoking a long thin cigar.  

Where would i get one hundred and fifty thousand dollars? It could happen anywhere, a forgotten attaché case carelessly left in a doorway or the back seat of a convertible sports car, or a courier might mistakenly pass it on to me, believing i was the contact only because i guessed the right password, “canasta.” (See: Casino Royal by Ian Fleming.)

Before i could find or accidentally receive the money, however, Dan was released to a unit at Carson, about 180 miles south. Posted this close, we expected him to visit us, but he never did. We never went to see him either.  

A year and a half later Dan was given a General Discharge, given to troopers the army wants to forget, he told us, and he moved into our basement. He began to play solitaire. 

Sometimes our father came downstairs to chat with Dan where he sat on his bed turning over cards. 

“What kind of work are you interested in, son?”

 For as long as we could remember Dan drew pictures, an artist, and a good one. Growing up,  we all thought he would become a fine cartoonist. Now he told our father art no longer concerned him. When our father pressed him for more Dan told him his dream e job was breaking in virgins at a whorehouse. His expression was more vulgar than ‘breaking in,’ although ‘breaking in’ does more accurately describe the actual anatomical nature of this projected employment.

“Son, life is not a game.”

“Yes it is. I just got out of the fucking army.”

The young soldier turned over another card. 

“You better get off your dead ass and do something.”

“I’ll get off my dead ass when i’m good ad ready.”

Our father rose to leave. 

“You wouldn’t make a decent towel boy in a whorehouse,”

the old soldier said.   

Young soldier Dan said something to our father that made me leave the room; i closed my bedroom door and didn’t want to think or look at anyone for hours. 

Dan declined to advance  because, he told me years later, the enemy became the war itself and he had no idea what to do about it or if he could do anything. 

In a few months Dan got tired of solitaire, pooled his money with Art and they bought a used Volkswagen van. From the first day we knew it was right because Art found half an ounce of pot hidden in one of the seats. They cruised for kicks and chicks. The guy who sold them the van went to Florida and a month later the van broke down. It had been using oil and the cylinder compression was so low we had to get out and push it up hills. It finally stopped running in Denver. The next day Dan walked into the house. Since i didn’t hear his vehicle arrive in the alley behind the house or the driveway i asked, “Where’s the van?”

“Lakewood.”

“What happened? You get in a wreck?”

“No. I just thought i’d leave it, let the engine cool.”

Art and Dan collected tools and hitchhiked to Denver. They patched up the van engine well enough to get it back, very slowly, and parked it in the garage. They were so disgusted with the machine, their attitude negative to hateful, i thought they must have pushed the junk all the way up from Denver. They took turns dismantling the engine and putting it back together; it was a case of someone having taken out the original 2200cc “pancake” engine and replacing it with a 1600cc beetle engine which was not powerful enough to drive the weight of a van. The engine never ran very well, or for very long. 

We introduced Dan to the high school level night life of Cheyenne by asking him to buy beer for us. He bought it and helped us drink it. In summer we drove out on gravel roads among the ranches to drink beer and shoot at cattle with roman candles, holding the cardboard tube as the flaming balls shot out. One day we found some heifers outside a fence on a gravel road and drove them back through the barbed wire fence firing flaming balls at their buttocks. We were a new kind of cowboy.

We also shot Roman Candles at each other, but not much because someone could lose an eye. We dug around abandoned Depression Era shacks, sheds and corals for buried cash boxes stashed by farmers or ranchers or rustlers distrustful of banks. We found old bottles blue with age. We smoked pot, which was $5-$10 an ounce and talked about the best pot coming from Vietnam and Africa. Dan told us an army buddy dreamed he was wandering through fields of African Black growing three feet over his head, too thick for sunlight to penetrate, a loving darkness. The dreamer woke, still in the army, and wept bitter tears. 

Ft. Carson was a holding place for second-rate troops, Dan told us, so a lot of men were killing time looking for a fight.  You had to be sharp, you couldn’t look scared or someone would push you around and never quit. One night he fought three guys, swinging his belt buckle, the other end of the belt coiled around his fist and a trash can lid for a shield. If you wanted to get in a fight you go in Colorado Springs to a row of bars where men went to fight. One day in the field Dan was looking out the top hatch of an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) and a tree limb smacked him in the head. He was wearing a helmet or he would have been killed. 

One autumn afternoon our father was raking and burning leaves in the square cement incinerator in the back yard. From time to time he came into the house for a fresh bottle of beer. Eventually he was just drinking beer and looking at his fire.

The basement windows were open and smoke had come in. When he finished his job our father came downstairs and put his nose in the air. 

“I smell pot,” he said. 

“That’s burning leaves, daddy.” 

“Dope leaves! Don’t tell me what i smell!”  

We were used to him being drunk. We listened to him without eye contact. He was a happy drunk, but not always. He usually started his first beer in mid-afternoon as he worked. Working, some of the alcohol passed through his system (we saw him peeing in a corner of the yard) and something got done, so he wasn’t a lolling around drunk. His face, normally fair skinned and pink, turned deep red when he was drunk and deeper red when he was angry. 

We silently waited as he accused us of smoking pot and tearing down the country, accepting “plenty of good rubles from the commissars in Moscow,” and generally descending into an animal state of existence. He once shared an article he admired greatly written by the actor Edward G. Robinson whose theme in the essay was “I will not return to the slime.” This dedication to protecting and preserving civilization appealed to our father as consistent with his belief that the younger generation was devolving into a reptile state. Slime became a favorite word.  

Standing in the room, shouting and weeping, our father spent his rage on us silently watching and unwound into a pitiful moan; “Why do i drink? I drink because i have sons and i worry about them!” 

I thought he was so worn out he would soon leave for a nap or start to cry when he took a quick step forward and slapped Dan across the face. It was a weak blow, meek, reluctant, as if hinting, or testing, asking for a response. Dan, who began a game of solitaire as our father's rage rose and fell, looked up at the old man for five seconds while no one moved or spoke. 

“Hit me, hit me if you’re a man to,” our father shouted.

Dan picked up his cards and coat and left the house.

“Don’t come back! You ran from the enemy and now you’re running from me! Don’t come back!”

Art and i also quickly left the house.

“Where is my 30.06?”  Our father staggered upstairs as we escaped out the back door.  The old man kept a bolt action, pre world war two Springfield 30.06 infantry man’s rifle in his closet. He bought it second hand, reconditioned it and it reminded him of his own days in boot camp before being issued the truly splendid M-1 Garand. I left the house so fast i forgot my shoes. 

“What about mother?”  Art said when we reached the sidewalk.

We looked at each other for a long moment. Our mother had been upstairs watching tv during the screaming. Like me, Dan and Art thought that if we didn't return she was doomed.  

“She’s been dealing with the old fossil long enough,” Dan said. “She knows how to handle him. He won’t shoot her. If he does he won’t have anyone to yell at, except maybe the guys in the cell next to his.”

“Let’s call the pigs,” Art said.

“Good idea!”

As we walked down the street to a pay phone we expected to hear gunfire. 

Dan said, “This is it, i’m getting out of this nut house, it’s too crazy. It’s worse than the army.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know. Back to school in Laramie. I’ve got to get out of here.”

We called the police and waited at the phone booth. We also called a friend with a car, who soon arrived with pot at parking lot where the phone booth stood. While we waited Dan went to get beer. 

Of course we didn’t drink beer and smoke pot until the police arrived to arrest us, we had enough self-control to leave it alone, but having it and not being able to consume it made the wait very long. We waited for almost an hour before 

a cop car rolled up. The officer said he went to the indicated address and the man and woman there said no disturbance had occurred. We told him about the rifle and drunken yelling, but the officer was not inclined to take further action. He suggested we return home.

“And get shot? Not us!” 

We preferred to get stoned. We were concerned now more about missing a night cruising  and telling our story. We found a big party in the park. We hung around the park in various places drinking beer, 

Smoking cigarettes and pot. I wondered what sex might be like. I knew it felt good because i had tried it by myself. None of the women at the park offered their bodies up to me so i didn't find out about sex that night. The next morning i woke up on a floor wearing the clothes i had started out in and a pair of borrowed boots. 

A few days later Dan left for Laramie to pursue an academic career. He packed a duffel bag,  gave the van to Art and started a fire in the incinerator in the back yard filled with stuff he didn’t want. These incinerators, no longer used, were like a pill boxes, with a square hole in the top and on the side toward the street or alley a bottom hatch so the garbage man could slide in a shovel. We helped Dan and among the things burned was our model Huey helicopter. None of us wanted it. It flew into the square black hole in the top of the incinerator, into the home fire.

end of “The Helicopter”