Chickenhawk: Back in the World

We stood on top of a small hill. The light was dim, but not as dim as you’d think with the sun almost completely occluded. I had a piece of exposed X-ray film I used to look at the sun. Even when there was just a sliver of sun left, the light seemed almost normal. Then we saw a shadow approaching from the west. It rushed, flowing over the hills, steady and relentless. It was breathtaking. The wave of darkness hit. Snap! the stars came out. The lights of a little nearby town blinked on. We felt the quiet of sudden darkness. You could only hear the cold breeze rustle among the three of us on that hill. The corona of the sun blazed out from a black disk, a ring of pure energy. I took some pictures of the way the world looked from where we stood. Five minutes later, off in the distance, we saw the light rushing over the mountains, beating back the night. It’s things like this that remind me I’m living on a planet, spinning around a star, somewhere in space.

Elliott took the train with me to Minneapolis. I was stopping there to visit Bill Willis. Elliott had known Bill when we were kids, too, and wanted to see him.

Bill had a proper job for his talents now. He worked at Bell and Howell as a technician and made a nice living. How many guys would still be friends with somebody who’d fired them? Bill was one. He took Elliott and me into his apartment, showed us around the Twin Cities, and even stuffed some cash into my pocket before I left, like a mother.

On the trip back, I remember talking to a woman who asked me what I did. I didn’t know, so I said “I’m a writer” and nearly choked.

I messed around getting my notes and courage together, and then I began writing my Vietnam memoir. The date was May 17, 1979. (I know this only because Patience keeps a journal.) I decided the book would have twelve chapters, one for each month of my tour (August 1965 through August 1966), and I chose to write the November chapter first—when I was in the battle of la Drang Valley in 1965. November was filled with action, and I figured that would be the one to show a publisher.

When I finished, the chapter was thirty pages long. Patience read it and marked it up, saying I should give more details here, clarify this, expand that, shorten this, and so on. Patience is a very talented editor and a real pain in the ass about it. I rewrote it, the first time in my life I ever rewrote anything. When I finished, I had seventy pages. Much better, Patience said, and marked it all up again. I rewrote it again. Good, she said. I sent it off to Knox.

Knox wrote back saying it was powerful stuff, and I ought to keep at it. He said that if I got two hundred pages together, he’d take it around to see if he could sell it. I spent a day experiencing uncontrollable elation. With the exception of flying helicopters, I hadn’t done anything that gave me such satisfaction.

Knox had also said, “Have you read any Vietnam books?”

“No. I’m afraid they’d influence me.”

“Amateur. Get some. Read them. See how they handled it.”

I read A Rumor of War, by Philip Caputo. Caputo was a grunt Marine officer in Vietnam the same time I was there. He’d been tried for murder; had a lot of terrible things happen to him that I hadn’t experienced. Caputo’s book was also intimidating to me because the man wrote so damn well. I wondered if I was up to the task.

I read The Killing Zone, by Frederick Downs. Downs’s description of himself being blown to shreds at the end of book was electrifying.

I read If I Die in a Combat Zone, by Tim O’Brien. O’Brien’s book was about his tour as an Army grunt. It was a tough and moving narrative, but I thought I could match his writing skill. Going After Cacciato, his Vietnam novel, knocked my socks off when I read it later. He opened my eyes to kinds of writing I’d never thought of.

I read a short story in Harper’s called “Good Morning to You, Lieutenant,” by Larry Heinemann. A Vietnamese girl gets raped and murdered in the story and it felt like it. That story pissed me off for days. When I calmed down, I realized that the events were fictional, but the feelings weren’t. Heinemann was communicating emotion to me. I wanted to affect people like that. I had to tell people what it felt like to be a helicopter pilot in Vietnam.

When I read Dispatches, by Michael Herr, I decided that if a journalist could make his Vietnam experiences interesting reading, so could I.

It took me until February 1980 to put together a two-hundred-page manuscript with a thirty-page outline of the rest of the book. I couldn’t think what to call it, so I sent if off to Knox untitled. A week later, Knox wrote back and said he really was moved by it and would take it around. He warned me not to get my hopes up. The material was good, but it was going to be tough going. In 1980, nobody wanted to publish books about the Vietnam War.