Leroy: Lost Then Found

"Ohh, man" Leroy exhaled, shuffling up to that prone body splayed across those cobblestones, something carelessly dropped there, then quickly forgotten.

He thought maybe it was just a jacket overlooked, possibly a large plastic bag pulled from the dumpster in search of cans. From the far end of Stagedoor Alley he couldn't have been sure.

"That jus' ain't right" he stammered, shaking his head side to side, now standing just over this body.

It was a boy, as he noted that his pants were down and a buttoned shirt ripped open, the violence not yet apparent in the soft hollows of his stomach, downy hair that in this soft morning light glistened across his chest, those auburn glossy pubes grading up in a line to his navel, swirling as if just painted, still wet.

"Jus' a boy" he sighed, as he knelt using that broom handle to balance on, suddenly dropping his head and sobbing.

The tightness in his throat hurt real bad and his crying sounded like a croaking frog, he wanted a drink but first he had to call for the damn medic to get over here and help get Timmy up and away from this firefight, he couldn't do it himself, but damn those parrots were so loud, and that buzzing, that constant drone of buzzing, he could use his gun to announce his position but then those gooks would know too, but Timmy is dying, dammit, his blood is still oozing so he's still alive but if that damn medic didn't get here he would surely die, his best buddy in this god-forsaken green hell would die, dammit.

At the sound of that ragged crying a dog in the corner of the alleyway let out a baleful howl and Leroy suddenly snapped out of his trance, realizing he wasn't back in Vietnam, that this body in front of him wasn't his friend dying and this wasn't a rifle in his hand but that long pole he used, but here was a body and this boy was hurt and he had to do something, right now and quickly.

Leroy had graduated High School with honors but without much money and, since he hadn't any chance for a college to pick him up on a Sports scholarship like his teammate Dave, he was drafted and sent into this hellhole halfway across the globe.

At the time he figured that was better than staying in this backwater Town, working at the Gas and Go Auto Parts Service Center, the busiest business in Town and that wasn't saying so very much, so many customers only stopping while traveling to and from New York and Boston along Highway Nine, never to be seen again.

Anyway, the friends he had throughout High School were all going on to somewhere else and he would miss Harry and Jessie but mostly Dave when he left the state to go to some school in the Midwest, no matter where it was that he might end up.

So he had to have a ticket to ride out of this Town and here it was, in the mail as promised, signed for on the dotted line, his destination confirmed.

The only thing he had missed when signing was that there was no mention of a return ticket. But then, neither did that bus ride to the Canadian border and he certainly didn't have enough warm clothes for that trip.

It was a mistake, and the unfortunate thing was there were no backsies or do-overs.

It was like he had slipped and fell hard, all bearings of who he had been ripped out from beneath him. There were no friends, no family or any landmarks he would recognize. He knew as soon as those bus doors closed behind him, knocking that old battered suitcase that hadn't seen the road since that trip to Florida when he was 12, knew that he might not see kith or kin again, certainly not for those next 6 months of Boot Camp.

As that bus lurched onto the highway he was pinwheeling his arms just to stay upright, and now most mornings he was awakened by his own restlessness, swinging madly at those cowled demons that came for him in dreams.

Once he landed in Vietnam he did his swatting at the real enemy, those bugs swarming so thick that you might inhale them.

He could not know that these insects would be his ticket home, so much the better to come back strapped on a gurney in a medical transport ship than a brown box like his friend Timmy, even if he had to suffer that much more.

Well, no one could really say that the dead did not suffer, no one had come back to discuss that issue, had they?

He couldn't know how Timmy had felt the day he went down in that firefight, collapsing so quickly, spinning like a top released from a string, dropping to the ground next to him without another sound.

Timmy was dead as he hit the ground but Leroy had crawled over and sobbed as he held him, cradled in his arms as any mother might do for their sick child.

Timmy was just “Some Mother's Son”, as he used to say in defense of all women when the platoon got to trash-talking their girlfriends back home or the whores working those streets of Saigon. He had always referred to Leroy as "Some Mother" because he could take anyone in a fair fight and, being the blackest man in this platoon of soldiers from every corner of the country, that might be anywhere, at anytime.

They hadn't become fuck buddies until that night of R & R in Saigon, but even then there was a girl in that bed with them throughout the weekend. She was being paid and she had no opinion on their play action, but they certainly had fun calling out those drills, all the positions and plays they knew from those years on their respective Football squads back home.

The weed and wine were all the lubricant they needed, the tropical heat kept their clothes in a pile and that veil of sweat just kept things moving.

It was the only time they had actually slept in each others arms, when they wanted time together back at base it was always too quick and so very intense, utterly dangerous and so fucking amazing.

Being the two biggest boys in their platoon gave them an aura of masculinity that would never be questioned, the leeway to be more flirtatious than might be safe, that camaraderie contagious and certainly envied, even imitated by some of their buddies, creating an even stronger bond among their platoon.

Leroy still hadn't heard that song by that English fop band until he was shipped Stateside to a hospital and eventually home, wrapped in gauze and suffering badly from those bee stings that had almost blinded him.

Today he still couldn't eat popcorn, reminding him of that sensation of the entire patrol screaming, those bees flying into his mouth, chewing them up even as they stung him, spitting them out as fast as he could but never fast enough as he felt his tongue swelling and then go numb.

He could have died there, writhing on the floor in that verdant, sweltering jungle.

He had put his hands to his face and just knelt on that swamp, his tongue now a large obstacle in his head. His cheeks had swelled as if filled with those jawbreakers he would suck all day back at school but now he had four of them in his mouth. He crouched on that spongy jungle floor drooling through misshapen lips, air barely whistling through his nose.

He was no longer flailing his arms and those bees lost all interest, landing but just as quickly fly off to find some other perceived enemy.

His eyes were swollen shut, but there were fireworks and he was now back at home on the Fourth of July, the constant crackle and flaring of explosives so terribly close and yes, the pain was triggering those flashes of color, but this wasn't like that time he had been stoned, lying under the stars watching that tree sparkle with electricity, no, this was all too real, he just couldn't catch his breath and it wasn't from running that half mile track behind the school against Jessie who had almost won but then Leroy had powered through those last 50 yards, had made him eat dust, now he just couldn't breathe, and he felt light as a feather and that noise of the fireworks and those flashes of light were the most fun he'd had since he had set foot in this greener version of Hell.

He was rocking gently on that soft bed at home, feeling as if he were wrapped in his Gramma's quilts.

He looked to his left and there was Timmy bouncing next to him, smiling that Midwestern innocence, those freckles now starbursts across his cheeks, it had been so long he held his breath as Timmy took hold and turned his head, suddenly kissing him, feeling himself lifted up high, held tightly in Timmy's arms as he reached out to touch his cheek, but he remembered that Timmy was dead and suddenly he was gone in a flash of light as Leroy fell back onto the bed with a crash.

The medic had found Leroy, almost tripping over him, calling for the squad when mouth-to-mouth did nothing because of the swelling of his tongue. He was picked up, rolled onto his back and someone had jumped on his chest, the other soldiers pulling at his arms and legs, their weight keeping him immobile, just jerking in spasms as his brain was denied any more oxygen.

His buddies had stretched him flat as the medic inserted that trach directly into his throat, giving him a shot of morphine to calm those tremors racking his body, barely able to be held down by those four buddies, the entire platoon looking down into this disfigured face of a man they no longer recognized.

He remembered the time he had jumped off that cliff feet first and went 30 feet down into that ravine, legs straight as an arrow, and as he hit the surface his arms were pulled up over his head and the pressure on his chest was a tight blanket and his lungs were bursting and he went straight down, finally kicking his legs and waving his arms and he could see the surface and it was green and cool blue and shimmering, just like every morning before sunrise.

He suddenly broke through that dull pain, his arms were free and he wasn't gasping, could feel his lungs filling with air but he couldn't see a thing, just aware of the drone of those damn insects and the cawing call of parrots and this bright red light that was both the pain and the jungle sun through his swollen eyelids, searing his brain.

That trach had saved his life, giving him a scar that he would touch involuntarily whenever he drank whiskey. Maybe it was the harshness as it passed that point, that liquid heat so similar to the scorching noon sun in Vietnam beating down on your forehead, that rasp of hard liquor searing his throat, soaking those long ago memories in a brown viscous haze.

Whiskey helped him remember when he was so close to dying that he thought of Heaven as this big Green Room for that afternoon talk show, this week focused on the anti-war movement and he was their guest, today’s show being hosted by John and Yoko and he couldn't remember their name but that English fop band were singing their only hit song “Some Mother’s Son”, just as Timmy came to the stage door to wave, blowing him a kiss, to wish him good luck.