Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

One story, “Keith’s Ridge,” is about a teenage kid who sits and stares at grass waving in the breeze a little too long. He starts to see a pattern in the waves, starts to see the pattern as the signs of an invisible entity. When he follows this thing to Keith’s Ridge, he is pushed and tugged by strong swirls of wind. He takes the grabbing and pushing as caresses of acceptance right up until he’s flung off the cliff. Great story. Dell liked it, asked me if I ever tried to sell anything. I said I’d sent in that one, got a very nice rejection slip. You only tried once? she asked. Yep. I figure these guys know good stuff when they see it. Dell said I should keep trying. I had talent.

I got an A in English—my first in college. I did well in all my classes, finishing my first quarter with a 3.2 average. Grissom was pleased.

My major was fine arts, and within fine arts, I began to specialize in photography. I had won an Army photography contest with one of my prints. I thought photography might be the talent to replace flying. My instructor was Jerry Uelsmann. I’d seen him around when I was here the first time. He was just the photography instructor in 1962; now he was a celebrity in the art world, famous for his surreal pictures. He called his technique “post-visualization,” which meant he composed his photographs after collecting many negatives and then combined them in one flawless print. Uelsmann had the highest technical abilities, but that’s not what sold his pictures—they’re magically arresting images, photographs that Magritte might have made—boulders float over the sea; women are embraced by incandescent spheres. Unlike Uelsmann, I did “now-visualization.” I liked putting the picture together in the viewfinder. There is one magic point of view that feels right, makes a picture work, and I was finding them. Uelsmann said he liked my stuff: pictures of empty park benches and abandoned toys, empty houses. He said he liked the emotion in them. I was communicating. I got top grades in his class.

I never used the school’s darkrooms to make my prints. I preferred to work alone in the three-by-six-foot closet in our apartment I’d converted into a darkroom. When I came home from classes, I disappeared into this unventilated sweatbox with a bottle of whiskey, and printed photographs. When Patience had people over to visit, I stayed in the closet.

It was getting difficult to concentrate, difficult to see what the point was: these photographs, going to school. Not enough whiskey to make sense of it. Half a quart a day was not enough; was still jumpy; couldn’t think; couldn’t sleep; was getting worse. Shrink at Wolters had said I could go to the Veterans Administration and get Valium if I needed it. But, he said, “You should be fine after you get out. Being in the Army with the threat of going back to Vietnam is your problem.” Wrong. I was out of the Army, couldn’t go to Vietnam. Was still nuts. I went to the VA hospital to get Valium. Not so fast; we have procedures here. Had to be evaluated. Evaluation: talk to shrink for two hours.

I kept seeing student demonstrators on campus yelling about soldiers doing the wrong thing going to Vietnam. I got mad. Why, shiny-faced, draft-deferred twerps, are you sending them?

Patience was working nights to supplement the $145 a month I got on the GI Bill to go to school. It would’ve been $125 a month, but I had a wife and kid to support, so I got a twenty-dollar bonus for Jack and Patience. The GI Bill didn’t pay for the books, supplies, and the tuition like it did after World War II. (The rate and extent of our benefits was established by World War II veterans who thought we were using rubber bullets and special effects in Vietnam. Getting wounded or killed in this wimpy war just wasn’t as serious as it was in World War II.) Patience slept late. I waited for her to get up and make lunch. She made tuna fish salad better than I did, I told her.

Was drinking almost quart a day. Kids showed me marijuana at parties. Made me cough.

End of second quarter, grades dropped. Grissom said I’d better shape up soon. Grissom was right. Grissom was a veteran of World War II; he knew what was going on.

Veterans Administration sent me the results of my evaluation: I was fifty percent disabled for nervousness. I was afraid to tell anyone about my wimp disability. VA sent a check, back pay from the day I left the Army, invited me to come in for treatment:

What did you do in Vietnam?

Flew assault helicopters in the First Cav Division.

Dangerous?

Well, yeah—

How did you get along with your mother?

Huh?

Gave me Valium. Took five, six a day; drank the whiskey; smoked the pot. The Valium calmed me down, but only if I used it with the rest of the drugs.