Monday, January 31, 2005

So there is this moment caught on tape. It is the only moment I kind of remember and it is what is keeping me from watching again, keeping me from writing anymore.

I’m interviewing my father, I can’t tell you right now what about. But I’m interviewing him and suddenly when I move to ask a question I freeze. Not just for a second. My whole brain seizes up and suddenly not only can I not remember the question, but I can’t think of a new one. I interview for a living, lose my train of thought all the time. I’m great at transitioning into something else, an expert at picking up the ball and moving with it even if I’m distracted, uninterested, elsewhere. But at this moment I lose it, and what I know is on that tape is a stretch of silence where I’m groping for words. It is that moment that I don’t remember well, but I know my mind and I know when I watch it again and see my father’s face, listen to my staggered words after that stretch of silence that I will remember how it felt and maybe even catch a glimpse of what it felt like. I don’t want to remember what was behind that moment, I want to erase it from time.

I’ve already erased part of it. That interview took two tapes. We got in country, I can’t tell you where or when now but we got there and I’ve lost one of the tapes. Searched everywhere but I’ve misplaced it for good it seems. I looked in my jewelry box the other day and wondered at the crappy earrings I’ve held onto for over 20 years, marveled at the pearl necklace my grandmother gave me when I was three. I am good at holding on.

So here I sit struggling to hold onto all this. I keep going back to something I wrote down after beginning all this: “When it gets hard, remember, this is important.” I wrote it after doing research on Vietnam. Reading about the veterans who beat their children bloody. The ones who chained there dark-haired petite wives to garden gates at night, the ones who sit in easy chairs today and read war books over and over, who still breathe the oil slick of that faraway place.

I’m rusty now, and reeling. Trying to navigate my way back to the place where I can write something that means anything. There are so many half-truths here. So many sentences I can't quite finish.

Monday, January 10, 2005

Time and Grade

In the army, all GI’s are ranked E1 in basic training and are naturally promoted to E2 upon completion. He tells me now there is something called time and grade, if you mind your p’s and q’s for awhile you are naturally promoted over time. E1, E2, E3, etc.

My father was promoted to an E2 and demoted back to E1 more times than he can count, for fighting, going AWOL, assaulting an officer. The first time he was demoted he tells me the fight was with a crazy fucker. He says the guy randomly picked him and attacked. He tells me they started to throw punches, scuffled and were quickly pulled apart.

I have watched my father randomly confronted a dozen times in my life -- in a shoe store, at the zoo. He lets off a scent that draws people in, he is magnetic. They come to him and they want to argue, to hurt him, I always thought for no reason. After the fight he tells me the crazy guy had scratches on his face so they were called in by superiors. My dad says he was threatened with a demotion and told he had to write an essay on why fighting was wrong and apologize. He refused to do either and was bumped back to an E1. This was the first of many times, he tells me with a smile.

This time I question him.

“Do you know why he wanted to fight you?” I ask. Instead of answering he adds to his defense.

“A few weeks later that guy also attacked this other guy, a guy we called Preacher,” he says. “This kid was scrawny and carried his bible with him everywhere he went. Everyone was up in arms when he went after Preacher, everyone.

Several weeks after he was pushed back up to E2 my father and the crazy guy were walking down a staircase. He says the guy mouthed off to him, he doesn’t specify and I don’t ask. Called him a dickhead maybe? A pussy? Maybe he called him a spic, a wetback? Anyway, this man smarted off heading south on a staircase, and when he turned around to continue - or maybe to laugh - my father, four steps higher, kicked him squarely in the forehead. My father laughs at this memory. I laugh too and delight a little at our caveman nature. Marvel for a second at what brutality does: protection, admiration, courage, freedom. He cups his meathook over his face and says, “He had this huge knot.” We laugh again.

My father’s skin is deep brown, gold underneath. His fingers are thick and unforgiving, oil-stained and like tree bark. He can rub a pumice stone smooth. His hands are not built for moving across piano keys or fine handwork, he is a man you see holding a handsaw not a needle. However in the army GI’s are expected to sew on their own stripes, one for E1’s, a pair for E2’s. And the eight times my father was promoted to E2 and demoted again, I can see his thick hands holding steady, cradling a fine silver needle, and weaving in and out on that stripe. In and out of a place in between, like the space between heaven and hell, only easier it seems. Then I watch him pause a moment, lift the fabric and with a clean sharp razor blade rip those same stitches free, over and over and over.

His commanding officer also laughed when my dad was escorted back into his office He said, “I hope you haven’t sewn your stripes on all your uniforms.” I don’t know if he did or not, but he tells me he didn’t fight with that guy again. This whole conversation he is vague and paints this guy as a random freak, a violent predator, but when I ask him if he remembers his name, there is not a seconds hesitation, Barry Sanderson. When I ask him if he remembers everyone’s names, he says yes, the guys he hung out with anyway.

I see Barry Sanderson when he was six, a year after he lost his right big toe because his father couldn’t teach him to stay away from the ax used for splitting oak. Suddenly I imagine the small white rabbit he called Sundae and kept in a wood barrel in his closet, and the girl he raped when he was 13. How he cried when she wouldn’t be his friend anymore, how he swore he loved her like no other.

Sunday, January 02, 2005

I asked my father what the interview process has been like for him, if he thought about the interviews, was he affected afterward. He tells me it's like anything, it tickles your memory and brings you back to the smells and the feeling.

"It's like you get off this plane and it's so hot you feel twenty pounds heavier. The smells of diesel trucks running and jet planes, all these fuel smells mixed together It's confusing because it's still dark, just before sunrise and there's a million things going on, none of which you understand."

I am watching the tapes again, trying to sort it all out. When he answered this question I didn't think he understood it. I am discovering my own perception is twisted. These tapes don't lie, I am faced with my own misconceptions. I am fighting urges to snap the cassetes in half, crush them under my shoe and walk on. I am so uncomfortable watching my father move, hearing my own voice, the awkward, sterile way I make my approach.

I have spent the last week at my father's new home, deep in the woods of Northern California. It is vastly different from the terrain of our native East Bay. I have thought him moody, angry, distant, and as the days tick I'm changing my theory. My father is a joker, a wise man, a prophet. But he is also an actor, a man who cuts mountains to be a hero. I am beginning to see my father is my father, but this man in the woods is a purer version of what I have known. He spends days chopping wood, pushing snow, solitary and stoic. He is not in a mood, he is himself. We have not yet met.

On film I ask him again about arriving in Vietnam.

"We were all lined up with our duffle bags ready to get on this plane,Flying Tiger Airlines, throw some more water on board fuel back up and... I remember they're waiting to go home and they're giving you shit, you have no idea what's gonna happen. I remember that's how it was when I went home too. All this fresh meat coming in. All the guys are fresh and neat in their stateside fatigues."

I am caught on the word fatigue. Uniform? What?

"States were a little more streamlined, " he tells me. "Built to be tucked in and have creases in the sleeves and kind of a different color green, still the olive drab, but different."

"So what did you do after that?"

"After getting into country?"

He says this like I know. Like 'country' is a real place to me.

"Yeah."