Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

The accumulation of rejections, being considered too commercial by the academics, and the fact that I was running out of money were making me depressed. I left Solo to wander around New York to find a publisher while I began research for a book I wanted to write about Arabia.

A group of Vietnam veterans at the Union Correctional Institution, a very serious state prison near Raiford, Florida, invited me to give a talk to their group. Reluctantly, I agreed. I brought Patience with me. The idea of going into this prison was daunting. Raiford is not Eglin. It is surrounded by high walls, guard towers, and barbed wire. Our escort said the average sentence there was life. I enjoyed talking to the prisoners, but was very happy to leave. I found the place scary as hell.

On the drive home, Patience told me that one of the inmates had said he wished his wife had been as understanding as she—it might’ve kept him out of prison. It made her cry. She decided that she’d write a book for the wives of Vietnam vets, called, she announced in the car, Vietnam: A Woman’s Guide.

She wrote a proposal immediately. I was happy to see her doing it. She’s a great writer, and somebody in the family had to publish a book. She sent her idea to Knox, who sent it on to Gerry Howard, the editor who hates robots, and damn if he didn’t buy it. He offered Patience an advance of fifteen thousand dollars, twice what they’d given me, and she was ecstatic. So was I, but why did he give her more than me? Knox sent a note later saying, “Jeez—don’t let this Viking Penguin business go to Patience’s head! Keep her in the kitchen as much as possible …”

Joe Haldeman and his wife, Gay, were visiting us at the cabin one afternoon soon after Patience sold her book. The chatter was happy. Joe had just sold his sixteenth book, Tool of the Trade; Patience had just sold her first. I lurked in the corner forcing smiles when they looked my way. It’s tough being around successful people when you aren’t, especially if you claim to be in the same profession. They’d poured some champagne to toast their successes. I declined because, I said, champagne gave me a headache. As they drank their goddamn champagne, the phone rang.

It was Knox. “I’ve got some interest from Putnam, Bob. I’ll know in an hour. How do you want to get paid?” He meant did I want all the advance at once or did I want to break it up into payments. My heart was beating wildly in my throat. I said I’d like installments.

I had a glass of champagne, and in half an hour Knox called back and said it was a deal. Lisa Wager, a senior editor at G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a very discerning and intelligent woman, who obviously had great taste, loved Weapon.

Finally, after ten years of trying, Solo lived.

While Weapon was still an unedited manuscript, it was optioned by Twentieth Century-Fox to be a movie. Knox sold it to publishers in England, Japan, and Germany. In a few months, I’d gathered in a whole bunch of sheaves, as they say.

The book wasn’t a best-seller, but the reviews were great. The New York Times (which did not consider it science fiction, but a technothriller), said “Put it at the top of your list” and later included it in their list of notable books for 1989. What did Gerry Howard know about robots, anyway? I had broken the one-book barrier.

Patience’s book came out as Recovering from the War: A Woman’s Guide to Helping Your Vietnam Vet, Your Family, and Yourself in 1990. Viking sent her on a book tour. I went with her and got some of the writer’s perks I’d missed while I was in jail. We were on the Today Show together and stayed at posh hotels in twelve cities all over the country. Patience is now working on a new book.

Jack, now twenty-eight, is a musician. His group, NDolphin, was very popular in the Gainesville area until they broke up. He writes all of his songs, a talent which Patience and I assume he inherited from us, but he also writes and plays his own music, something that is totally mysterious to two people who can’t carry a tune in a bucket.

I’ve written Solo, a sequel to Weapon, and this book you are now reading.

In March 1989, the U.S. Parole Commission released me from their supervision, and in May the Florida Office of Executive Clemency sent me a piece of paper entitled certificate of restoration of civil rights.

Officially, I am just like everybody else. Back in the world.

EPILOGUE

I’d given quite a few talks at universities, been included in a BBC television program on helicopters; but I’d never given a talk to my peers, the pilots who flew in Vietnam, the ones I wrote about.

I am a member of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association, the VHPA, which now has over six thousand members. I went to my first reunion at their annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in 1987.