Leroy: Lost Then Found

Bedbound

He wasn't home yet, but knew he was now pointed in that direction and since losing Timmy there was little to keep him rooted in that jungle. Each had been bundled and carried from this green hell with no options, with no choice but without regrets.

Timmy had added a lightness, an illusive sense of infallibility knowing he was always at Leroy’s left, that new appendage he had grown and now depended on, this rudder steering him past any misgivings, an anchor settling that restlessness he had felt since leaving Town.

These changes experienced with Timmy completely tweaked the dulling details of that daily grind, mastering the mundane needs of eating, sleeping and remaining invisible, the grunt life demanding abject obedience to any Commanding Officer whether wearing stripes for dubious past exploits or kowtowing to a daily designated overseer picked from that platoon to manage dreary work details deemed necessary, right here and right now.

This drudgery was only underlined by that sense of insecurity of your surroundings, keeping everyone on edge, those reports of skirmishes, maneuvers and ever-changing assignments squawked from that green box that were never good, reinforcing a constant of pure anxiety of The Enemy which included everyone, even those disembodied voices detailing life or death decisions from a universe not resembling their existence in the least, merely a pin prick on that map tacked to a wall in some faraway bunker.

The body count and ammo rounds, the acreage of pristine jungle sporting napalmed scars across the breadth of the country, all on a steady upward creep, were the only benchmarks recognized for winning this fruitless war.

Those fears, frustration and boredom made for a tinderbox and the slightest spark could set a night aflame.

It had happened in other platoons, those stories shared in hushed tones, some boastful braying of the barbarity inflicted on those surrounding villages and local population, overlooked if not sanctioned from the highest brass to your platoon Sargent causing more than one throw down, gratuitous violence too hard to stomach and the more overt depravity impossible to excuse, and so his own platoon had decreed that the events of the day were never to be addressed around those nightly fires.

Leroy reluctantly would join in these circle jerks more in need of the distraction of company then to partake in the communal sharing of that weeks' supply of drugs procured from passing platoons, scored in the back streets of Phuket or thrown to shore from some passing sampan, a quick but long established rendezvous as payoff to slip past the soldiers and sailors patrolling these shores.

He hadn't done much with drugs when back in Town, would drink a few too many beers with the team, would smoke a few cigarettes and had even tried what he now knew was the worst “grass”, clearly shelved and then shipped to the Northeast from somewhere on the West Coast after they had smoked all the good shit coming in from Hawaii.

Once in Vietnam he clearly understood that desire to escape, that need to withdraw from this moment and numb your mind to those horrors surrounding you, but Leroy could not avoid seeing the ravages drugs would do to even the gentlest minds.

The soldiers in his platoon were a nationwide sampling of cultures, religions and physical types yet there was no rationale for those effects or the expression of sublimated desires, drives kept in check only under that masking salve applied liberally by family and society, now refracted in a telling gesture or a slip of the tongue.

Leroy had nurtured a fragile ability to trust in those months among this platoon of strangers patrolling uncharted jungle byways to addressing any challenges that they might stumble upon, whether a churning stream force fed by that last storm or placid Villagers pointedly ignoring them as they trod thru the center square surrounded by barking dogs and squealing children excited by this apparition wrapped in green, guns and more gear than any of those villagers might ever see again.

Today, literally bed bound, his only companions these machines whirring and bleeping in time, in lockstep toward a future he could not know, Leroy was less interested in those not so long ago memories than his fragile health status and very slim probability of full recovery.

Initially the little they could do was to keep him as comfortable as possible, best achieved by over-medicating him with painkillers, numbing him to this new physical reality.

Leroy soon schooled himself in this new jargon, that medical shorthand barked between seasoned nursing staff and these medical military trainees, the instructions and oversight by dour doctors quickly scribbled onto status sheets hung from the end of his bed, that clicking of ballpoint pens the only indication his care and comfort was being considered, assessed in monosyllabic half questions peppered at any attending nursing staff.

The newness of this foreign language and unseen landscape of his hospital room, this challenge to keep himself aware, to comprehend his status and slow recovery, mirrored those shifting surroundings and fast friendships that had kept his platoon shielded as they pinballed from the known into complete uncertainty, their resentful obedience of military protocol morphing to that unceremonious collapse at day's end for a meal and restless sleep, strangers relying on this new band of brothers to ward off all perceived threats or actual enemy.

At the helm and gently holding his heart in his cupped calloused hands had been Timmy, this man-child so like himself that Leroy saw his own hesitation and longings in the most casual movements, his reflection swimming in those blue pools of crystalline calm lakes, those eyes so unlike his own, that lanky freckled body almost translucent when these men would strip and take a long needed bath, released from the constraints of their combat costumes and imposed dictates of military machismo, that identity of infallibility laying languid in piles stream-side as they played.

It was in these too few moments that Leroy and Timmy could be childlike, unfettered, completely exposed and marveling in their virility and vulnerability outside the constraints of that group think, reveling in their admiration and youthful passion.

To Be Continued