Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

To celebrate the Fourth of July, we had a fireworks war in the house. Girls against boys. We threw firecrackers like grenades at each other. Made a lot of noise, and since the Portuguese (except those who celebrate every day anyway) don’t honor our independence, people noticed. When we started a small brush fire (the battle had moved outside), the police arrived. We threw buckets of water, which Jack, who was five and just came up to my waist, pumped out of a cistern, on the flames and put the fire out while Smith, speaking slick Portuguese, convinced the police to leave us alone. The man has a silver tongue.

Before we went back to Spain, I showed Bill my time-travel story. He read it and said it was good; just needed a little rewriting, was all. I took that as a polite way of saying I had some talent, and if I worked at it I might torture the stupid story into something bearable. I figured real writers just sat down and wrote the final draft—rewriting was for amateurs.

Spain. I’m walking along the road with Frank. We see a dog lying on the shoulder. I go to it and it wags its tail slightly, but I can see its back is broken. I’m outraged: these fucking people will just let a dog lie here dying? Where’s the owner? Where’s the vet? Pepe comes over and says someone has to kill the dog, but no one wants to and the vet is gone. You, Pepe says, have to kill the dog. Me? It’s not my dog. No one else will, Pepe says, smiling the way people do when they’ve stuck someone else with a moral dilemma. I squat by the dog and talk to it and it wags its tail, and I’m feeling sick. I stroke the dog. “Good girl. Good dog. You’ll be okay.” Someone hands me a sledgehammer. A hammer? That’s the best we can do? A fucking hammer? They nod. I’m holding the hammer. Everybody begins to leave. Everybody’s gone. I have to kill this dog. I’m talking to the dog, but the dog senses something is up and rolls its eyes nervously, its tail slapping the ground. I say goddammit to myself a hundred times and curse the Spaniards and swing the hammer like a golf club and smash the dog’s head right after I said she’d be all right.

Everybody buys me drinks at the Casino, but I’m pissed off; I’m shaking. Fernando comes in and tells me the dog didn’t die. I jump up. He quickly adds that someone else finished her off.

The Aguileras were packing up to resume life in the States. Barbie left a month before Frank to get their house ready while Frank finished his research. When Frank left, we stayed. I wasn’t ready to go home yet. We rented a small house next to Escopeta’s General Store on Ramon y Cajal, an ancient Roman road near the center of town.

I pecked at stories. Patience shopped and learned how to cook Spanish food.

Jack knew everybody and spoke Spanish like a native. I saw him run into Bar Buenos Aires one afternoon while I was there. He didn’t see me. His friends stayed in the street, too shy to come in without their parents. Jack—who was allowed by everybody to do anything he wanted—swaggered over to the counter and tapped a duro—a Spanish nickel—on top, demanding a chupa, a lollipop. His head was a foot lower than the countertop. Jose Manuel, the owner of the bar, leaned over, grinned, and handed Jack some chupas and took the coin. Jack walked outside and gave each of his friends a candy and they ran off together, a regular little mob of street urchins.

Jack accepted Almonaster as home with the aplomb of a five-year- old. When Patience and I went to Morocco, we left him in the village with Escopeta’s family, the owners of the grocery. Jack was especially good friends with Escopeta’s son, Manolo, but he was in love with Escopeta’s teenage daughter, Manola. She spoiled him with attention. When we came back a week later with an English couple we’d befriended on the trip, the village kids, dirty faces, short pants, big smiles, swarmed around the Roach, laughing and yelling. Patience pointed out one of the kids as our son. Our new friends were amazed.

This expatriate stuff was getting old. America was in the news— Neil Armstrong had just landed on the moon (most people thought that was great, but one old sage at the Casino warned that it was all done in a studio, with actors and a model lunar lander). As much as I was immersed in the Spanish culture, I missed the States. That was difficult to accept. I had no respect for the political system that created Vietnam, yet I missed the country and the people. The point of this visit, to forget Vietnam and to recover my sanity, was not working. My writing was getting nowhere because I lacked the faith that I could do it. I was drinking a quart of booze a day.