Chickenhawk: Back in the World - Life After Vietnam

I liked Tangier. When we visited from Spain, Patience and I had discovered a pension called Hotel Florida, so I went there. The rooms were small and plain, cost two dollars a day. Another two bucks bought meals sent up from the restaurant downstairs. Because the rooms were boring, young people from Germany, Holland, England, Spain, Portugal, France, and Canada sat out in a sort of living room around a big table jabbering away in English. Compared to the Moroccans, we were all from the same neighborhood. We smoked keef, a potent form of marijuana, drank sweet tea, and talked a blue streak.

The population of the Florida changed every night as people came and went. My last night there, I talked to a Canadian girl whom I seemed to know but had never met. I had severe wounds from all the trouble I had generated with my fling with Mary, but I was very lonely. I asked the girl if I could sleep with her, no sex, figuring she’d tell me to buzz off. She said okay; and that is what we did—we were both lonely.

On the ferry back to Spain I met three Canadian girls and hung out with them during the crossing. When we got to Algeciras, I offered them a ride to Seville. The annual feria of Seville—a big summer festival in which everybody wears traditional costumes and caballeros ride around on horses—was in full swing, so I showed the Canadians around, stopping to listen to mariachi music at the Mexican pavilion and eating steak at the Argentine pavilion.

When I said good-bye, they asked me where I was going. I said Almonaster La Real. What’s that? Tiny village in the middle of nowhere. They looked very interested. Want to come? Yeah.

We stopped at Cortegana, a town five miles from Almonaster, at midnight and got two rooms. The next morning I created a sensation in Almonaster by showing up with the girls. The village women (who all knew Patience) were bent out of shape. Me, a married man, and three loose (hitchhiker) girls. Oh!

Pepe thought it was funny. I told him I was taking them to Lisbon. He winked. “What a nice person you are, to go out of your way for these poor girls.”

I winked back. There was no way I could convince anyone that I was just lonely and that traveling with the girls was innocent fun. Before we left for Lisbon, I went to see Don Bias, the doctor, and got some drugs for a miserable cold I’d picked up. Doc gave me a bottle of antihistamines. I took two pills and we jumped in the car and left.

I made one stop before Portugal. I had a beer and took another pill. We drove into Portugal around sunset. Going around a turn, fifty miles later, I blacked out. I remember going into the turn, then nothing, then the sight of the sharp ditch rushing at me, crash, then nothing.

It was like one of those mornings when you can’t seem to wake up except I had no idea where I was.

I didn’t remember any shooting.

I thought this was a quiet LZ.

I heard the girls sobbing behind me and remembered I was in a car. “Bob,” one of the girls said, “can you open your door?”

It felt like my eyes were open, but I couldn’t see anything. I blinked for a while and saw a ruby glow. I said “Sure” and pulled the door handle and pushed on the door. I passed out.

The car shook. I woke up. Portuguese voices chattered all around us, but I couldn’t see anything. The door was yanked open and hands reached in and pulled me out. They held me up and my vision cleared. I watched them pulling the girls out; they had lots of cuts. The hood and the trunk of the car stood straight up, all the glass was broken out. The car was a crumpled mess two hundred feet from the road. “You rolled and flipped all the way,” said one of the men. “Can you stand?” I said yes. They let go. I collapsed. When they tried to get me up, I said no, it’s okay here. The grass on my cheek felt as soft and smooth as cool silk. I wanted to sleep. They helped us into their cars. One of the girls and I sat in the backseat of a very clean car, bleeding like stuck pigs. We looked at each other. She was covered in blood and scared to death. I’d carried so many bloody people in my helicopter I felt almost at home. I told her she’d be okay.

I had crashed on a simple ground mission to Lisbon, and my passengers had gotten hurt. I had really screwed up. Something was odd about my face. Experimenting with my tongue, I discovered I could stick it through a gash under my lower lip. I could also touch my nose with my tongue because it had moved down.