Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

As long as the projects changed often and as long as they were challenging, I was interested. But that was rare. Usually I messed around with my own photography experiments or played with the computer. Computers were novel in 1970. We had a Digital PDP-8 that I knew just enough about to be its greatest threat. One night, as I taught myself the octal numbering system by flipping toggles on the computer’s front panel and watching all the nifty lights flash, I somehow sent messages to the computer that made it dump the main program—the one we used to create some of the photomask templates. Naturally, I didn’t mention this to anyone when I left. When I came to work the next afternoon, the place was a madhouse. Since no one there actually understood the computer, they’d flown in a consultant from New York to straighten things out. Photomask production was stalled. The boss asked me if I knew anything about it. Heck no, Boss. I’m always in the darkroom.

A few weeks later, after reading the technical manuals, I dumped the program and reinstalled it, to see how it was done. That guy from New York made a fortune doing pretty simple stuff.

Driving to work one afternoon, I passed a motorcycle shop that had a sparkling new racy-sexy Honda 750 motorcycle sitting out front. No one in America had ever seen a machine like this before. Four cylinders, four upswept exhaust pipes, great noise, lots of power. Vaaroom! I took it for a ride. Low-level flying. I had to have it. A few weeks later, I did.

I had a job and a motorcycle; so why was I so unhappy? One reason was I had no home life. My schedule was weird. I got off work at midnight, drove home on the bike, and sat around until about three or four drinking bourbon and watching late-night television while Patience slept. She’d gotten a job on the day shift at Radiation, soldering stuff onto circuit boards. I slept most of the day away, getting up around noon to go to work three hours later. Patience and I became strangers.

One of the girls who worked in the cafeteria, Mary, used to joke around with me when I ate there. She was funny enough to be cute. When I asked her if she wanted to go for a ride on my bike one night, she said yes. In a few weeks, we were sleeping together. It was automatic—I don’t know how these things happen. Sometimes I think I was just along for the ride while my dick did the driving.

Big confession a few weeks later. Patience was very hurt. I watched her cry and knew I should feel something—I wanted to feel something—but I didn’t. I kept seeing Mary—I couldn’t stop. I even told Patience when I’d be away with Mary—don’t wait up. For revenge, Patience drove the Roach to Tampa to see an old boyfriend. She wrecked the car there. When she got back, she said she’d decided she was packing up Jack and going back to school—with me or without me.

Okay. I wasn’t sure about returning to school, but my job seemed like a monotonous path to the grave. Maybe if I had more of a challenge, I’d be interested. I went to my division boss and told him I could run the entire photomask section better than anybody there and that’s what I wanted to do. He agreed that I probably could, but I’d only been there six months. I said, okay, I quit.

CHAPTER 5

September 1970—We loaded a rental truck with all our stuff, including my bike. The plan was that Patience and Jack would drive the truck to the house we’d rented in Gainesville and I would meet them there with the Roach, which was supposed to be out of the repair shop that afternoon. The shop was late getting the Roach ready, and I didn’t leave Melbourne until eleven.

I smelled gas, but couldn’t find the leak. I drove with the windows open. I woke up lying across the front seats. Dim light glowed in through the windshield.

Too much light. Bad place for a mortar attack.

The Huey is leaking fuel?

Tell the crew chief.

Gasoline? We use jet fuel.

I sat up. The Roach’s front bumper was touching the guardrail of an overpass. No damage. I must have been going very slowly as I passed out from the fumes. I got out and watched a car hurtle beneath the overpass. Real close. Walked back to the Roach. The smell of gas was very strong, but there were only fifty miles to go. I got back in and drove with my head stuck out the window. Arrived in Gainesville feeling sick. Before I unloaded our stuff from the truck, I found the leak: the Roach had a sediment bowl just under the fuel tank that I didn’t know about. The sediment-bowl gasket leaked and the fumes were being sucked in through the dash.