Dunc

Now that the Class of ’65 reunion was over I decided to spend another day to look around the city I’d left 20 years before. I headed south to the farming area where the narrow county roads were always good for small adventures. One time my wife and I wandered onto a dirt road that abutted a farm that raised miniature horses. At first we thought the herd we saw was at least 200 feet away but they were actually just 50 ft away. The little horses were just two feet high at the shoulder. Months later we tried to find them again but didn’t succeed. Another time we followed the flight of an egret, not a native bird in the Southwest, and found a hidden wild bird sanctuary in an artificial lake.

This time, when I saw the amateurish sign “Caesar’s Palettes” written large on the side of an old barn in the Lower Valley, I just had to stop, look, and ask. The tall brush and huge cottonwood trees obscured the front of the barn so I couldn’t see the enormous piles of wooden palettes, the kind used in warehouses all over the world to carry stacked goods.

The barn was about 300 feet from FM78, the farm-to-market road that ended just five miles south where it joined State 20. I drove over the rutted driveway to the open barn doors, got out of the car to the sound of rock music blasting from a pair of tower speakers located on each side of the doors. Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane were just finishing “White Rabbit”. “…..feed your head, feed your head…”, she wailed. No sooner was she done than Janis Joplin implored me to “take another little piece of my heart….”

Thinking I must have made a mistake and wandered into Psychedelphia, circa 1968, I turned back to my car.

“Mex!”

I hadn’t been called “Mex” since Vietnam. I whipped around to see who’d called me. It was a tall old man, sunburned to a crisp, who looked a little like somebody I used to know.

“Mex! It’s me, Dunc. Dunc McGregor.”

The Dunc I remembered from ‘Nam was a lean, broad shouldered guy, about 6ft a hundred, messy red hair, a droopy Fu Manchu mustache, every bit as tough as he looked. This guy was tall and wide like Dunc; graying red hair tied up in a pony tail, no mustache. I couldn’t place him.

“You don’t look 18 anymore either, Mex. If it wasn’t for your big nose I wouldn’t recognize you any more than I could find Waldo. It’s me, Dunc. ‘Nam, ’68, best friend you ever had.”

“Dunc? Where the hell’ve you been for the last 40 years? I’ve been looking for you all over the country all this time and you’ve been holed up in my own home town? I’m here to collect the $8 gas money you borrowed in LA.”

“No. You got it wrong, Slick. It’s you that owes me. Forty years, compound interest adds up, boy. Cash only, please. No checks.”

Like old times we did the dozens, matching wits, each trying hard to top the other until we ran dry.

“Dunc, ‘Caesar’s Palettes’?”

“Long story, Mex. Come on inside. I’ve got some cold beer and some candy ass soda pop just in case you’re still a wimp.”

He pulled two beers out of the cooler, turned the volume control down on the stereo and led me out a big cottonwood next to the barn. We sat down and looked at each other wondering if we looked as old as the guy we were looking at.

When our enlistment was up it was Dunc who saw me off at the Greyhound Bus Station in LA in ’69. I was going home to Texas. Both of us had mustered out of the service at the same time a couple of months before. He was getting up the money to buy a Harley then head home to Mississippi. We tried to stay in contact at first but it didn’t last long. I hadn’t thought about him in years.

His family was what’s called white trash, meaning poor, uneducated, and in some ways proud of being ignorant. He grew up in Mississippi among similarly poor blacks and Mexican migrant workers working alongside them in the watermelon fields and pecan orchards. When that work thinned they went to work in the poultry farms slaughtering and cleaning chickens from sunrise to sunset. Every man was a human being to Dunc.

His relentless energy as a linebacker in high school earned him a scholarship to Mississippi State where the team elected him defensive captain in his sophomore year. He was always the first to ‘hit the hole’ where the ball carriers were most apt to run but at 6ft. 3, 190lbs, was judged too small and light to play in the NFL. Unfortunately, the war in Vietnam was in full cry when he graduated and he was drafted immediately and sent to boot camp where it took three DI’s nine weeks of mighty effort to break him.

It wasn’t but two days after he reported to his base commander in 'Nam that Dunc was brought before his CO for fighting. Pecking orders are fact of life everywhere in life. Factions form, each with its leader and followers. Dunc, being Dunc, refused to kowtow to one of the self-described ‘leaders’ and was beaten badly but he wouldn’t back down. Eventually, he got the upper hand, so to speak, and broke the leader’s wrists -- both of them. To save the paperwork and hassle of a court martial Dunc was sentenced to three weeks latrine duty and was never challenged again. The guy he’d injured was sent stateside.

“Damn it, Mex, last time I saw you was at the bus station in LA and you borrowed $8.00. Saw Russ and Sergio in San Francisco in ’72. They told me Spence was living in Trucknutz, Arizona or something like that.”

I said, “We had some good times while we were waiting to muster out, remember?”

“Yeah, those girls who came to the parties over at Russ’s place? That redhead with the short dress, hair up high; that little girl had legs that went all the way up her………..”

“Dunc, you’re talking about my wife.”

“Oh, shit, man. I didn’t know. She married you? I gave her more credit for brains. Man, you got the better part of that deal.”

Still not believing, “The redhead and you?”

I nodded, yes.

Now really curious, “How’d you do it? I was gonna make a run at her but Marc had dibs already from being her pen pal or some shit.”

Catching himself now, he put his hand on my knee, “Hey, Mex, I didn’t mean nothing by that. I’m sorry, man.”

I told him no problem. It was a long time ago. Anyway, I told him, we had bunch of kids, owned a small business until we retired to Florida. Got another beer?

As he walked to the barn for the beer I laughed quietly at the idea that Dunc would make passes at my girlfriend, now wife. Back then Dunc looked like and acted like the bad boy that women are powerfully attracted to when they’re bored with their boyfriends or just looking for something out of the ordinary. Good looking, friendly, approachable, a sort of wild, unpredictable attitude about him. He was a dynamo in a crowd but tongue tied and hugely bashful whenever he was alone with a woman. One of the girls told me that she tried everything but strip down to get him to make a move on her. When she got real close he fumbled his drink, spilled it on her dress and on his pants then spent the next two hours apologizing.

Fresh beer in hand I said, "I was just thinking about you and the Harley you bought in LA to drive home.”

“That was a sweet ride, a 19 and 69 Harley Sportster. Took me 23 hours non-stop, ‘cept for gas and food to get to Clarksdale. My dad saw me drive up. Didn’t say anything right off. He just put me in his truck and took me to the ER. The nurses thought I was in a fire, my skin peeling off me, bleeding. It was windburn on my face, arms, hands, feet; even parts of my body that were covered. Doctor said he’d never seen windburn that bad. I was laid up in the hospital for two weeks, mostly knocked out with pain pills. Took a long time to heal up and I had to stay out of the sun for almost a year. Wasn’t allowed to drink either. I was a scary sight, too. My skin was blotchy all over, looked like I had some disease. If I was a horse or a cow no problem with being multi-color but hard for a man to get dates looking that way. It wasn’t exactly the homecoming I had in mind. Crazy times. Crazy man.”

Dunc may have been crazy but he was an educated crazy man. He had a civil engineering degree and was 23 when Uncle Sam drafted him. They offered him a commission as a 1^st Lieutenant owing to his degree but he turned it down saying he’d be nuts to be frag bait. He’d just as soon be a grunt, do his time, and go home. Two years later when we mustering out we were required to listen to a non-com try to talk us into reenlisting; get bonus money, go up at least one pay grade for two more years.

Dunc only spoke to the non-com for two minutes. Everybody else spent at least 20 minutes listening to the pitch.

“Dunc, what happened?”

“Nothing. The guy said my name and serial number. I said it was me. Then he said, have you thought about reenlisting?

“I said, no, reached across his desk, took the form, signed it, and left.”

We laughed at the memory of the lifer just sitting there with all his medals and stripes, expecting respect and admiration and getting neither from a grunt with a thousand yard stare.

“Mex, of the all the guys you were my best friend, kept me out of a lot of trouble like that time in Bangkok with the Marines.”

I thought about the time he told everybody in a bar in Singapore that he was going to kill me. Before that he’d protected me from the rednecks in our unit where being brown, black, or different was an invitation to abuse and insults. When they wouldn’t stop harassing me, he spoke up. “Listen up”, he said. “Nobody but ME calls this spic a spic. You think otherwise, let me know now; save me some time looking for you later.”

“I was your best friend? You forget you what happened in Singapore?”

“Jesus, Mex, what’d you expect? You called me a queer.”

“I didn’t call you a queer. You just thought I did.”

We were on R&R in Singapore. The bunch of us had rented rooms in a cheap hotel near the bars and whores but Dunc had other ideas. He rented a motorbike to go up to the mountains about 50 miles away. All excited about driving up there, staying at a good hotel for a change, he invited me to go with him.

“It’ll be nice. Real cool up in those mountains, rain forest, sleep on clean sheets on a bed that’s only used once a night. We’ll have fun.”

I was thinking about how I wanted to spend my R&R and I said, “Nah, I’m not that kind of guy.” It was a joke but Dunc heard something else.

According to Russ, on the last night of our R&R Dunc and the other guys were in a bar drinking as much as they could hold before going back. They were laughing, joking, and insulting each other as usual except for Dunc. He slugged down one beer after another, looking pissed.

Around midnight he slammed his bottle on the table looked around at the guys and said, “Nobody calls me a queer. I’m gonna break that wetback in two, then I’m gonna stomp his scurvy body flat as a goddamn tortilla, then I’m gonna cut him up in pieces and feed ‘em to the sharks. Anybody know where that sumbitch is? I’m gonna do it right now.”

Russ, who was bigger and meaner, pulled him outside and calmed him down. The next day all was forgotten in the dense fog of massive hangovers.

“Well, hell, Mex, you know I didn’t mean it. That was more'n 40 years ago. Damn, this is the second time I’m apologizing to you today. You the Ghost of Christmas Past or something? What’s next? You’re gonna tell me my future? Remember the MP’s in PI? I saved your skinny ass that time.”

What actually happened in PI was different from his recollection. My memory is better. I wasn’t drunk but I was high.

On that R&R, Dunc announced that he was going to get laid by all the Filipino bargirls in one bar. Two things argued against the success of his mission. We were going to bars that had at least 20 hostesses. That would mean five women each day for four days. Dunc was extraordinary in lots of ways but that fantasy would never happen. The other factor was bar etiquette among the working girls. If a girl succeeding in getting a guy to buy her drinks and maybe her favors later on he belonged to her as long as she wanted. If he came back the next day she would still own him unless she cut him loose for being cheap or whatever reason and he became fair game for the other girls to try. A guy who tried to have his fun with more than one girl in the same bar was risking plenty. He could instigate a fight among the girls or could become a victim of violence himself.

We were all in it together for good or ill so we came up with a plan to keep him and us safe. One of the guys was on his third tour and knew all the hot spots during R&R excursions. He told Dunc that he knew a pimp who could arrange a barfull of girls for him but that he moved around a lot. For the next six hours the gang went from bar to bar drinking at all of them and never finding the imaginary pimp. It was half past eleven. Time to go.

The regs were that we had to be off the streets by 12:00 AM or the MP’s would pick us up. Dunc was blind drunk and mad as hell as we staggered towards our hotel. A block away from the hotel Dunc stumbled and fell on his back, stared at the sky admiring the stars and started singing a nursery rhyme. A pair of MP’s drove up and demanded ID’s; asked where our hotel was. It looked they were going to let us go but then Dunc began swearing at the MP’s, jarheads, if you want to know. He was still on his back struggling to get up. He rose to his feet wavering back and forth still swearing. I cut in telling the MP’s I could handle Dunc and get him off the streets. I grabbed his thumb and started leading him towards the hotel. Dunc cussed at me and for the umpteenth time vowed to break me in two, stomp my scurvy body until it was as flat as a goddamn tortilla; then he was going to cut me in pieces and feed 'em to the sharks. He didn’t stop yelling even after we arrived at the hotel going up the steps to his room with me still pulling him along by his thumb. The guys said I looked like I was walking a big dumb ape. I pushed him on the bed and waited until he fell asleep.

In Dunc’s version it was me that provoked the MP’s. He threw me over his shoulder and took me back to the hotel.

I decided not to challenge his recollection about what actually happened in PI so I changed the subject.

“I went over to my old house on North Loop by the Indian Reservation. The house and the pines I planted in ’85 are still there but all the neighbors are different, not friendly like the old ones. Seems like the city’s grown and the community’s shrunk somehow. Nothing’s the same as it was 20 years ago.”

“Ain’t that the truth? When I went back to my folks’ place in Clarksdale all the small farms were gone. All the land was just one big ass spread owned by a syndicate that doesn't give a good goddam about the land. I couldn’t stay. Plus I was all fucked up in my head from the war anyway. You weren’t much better off if I remember.

He was right about that. A lot of us weren’t right after Vietnam and nobody seemed to know what to do about it. The visibly disturbed ones were put in VA hospitals for untested therapies and drugs that probably made things worse. The rest of us lived with whatever was in our heads. Some did better than others.

“Soon as I healed up from the windburn I went back to LA, married a sweet girl but it didn’t last long. She couldn’t take the flashbacks and not knowing what I would do next. Three years, she was gone.

“After she left me I kicked around the country not looking for anything in particular, just moving around until 1984. By then I was on VA disability. The doctors gave me pills for depression but I stopped taking them because they were making me more depressed. The only good thing is the pills made me lose my taste for alcohol. Smelled like old piss. Kicked it except for a couple of beers now and then.

“I went up to Seattle and spent a couple of months at my sister’s place. Her husband’s doing real well; some kind of marketing genius, so they let me stay and wouldn’t let me pay for anything. When I had to move on again they staked me $500. That, plus my uncashed VA checks got me to Las Vegas where I lost most of my money.

Marsha and I met there. She was a cocktail waitress and at first I thought she was just cozying up to me for the money which was fine by me. What’s money for anyway? But she stayed with me after it was gone, been with me ever since. She’s at her mom’s now, up in Utah for a month. I remembered you and we decided to come here and look you up sometime around ‘96. You were gone by then. Some snotty asshole, said he knew you, told me you’d gone to Florida to sell TV’s or something.

“We were out of money so I went to work as a warehouseman and Marsha found work as a receptionist in a lawyer’s office. We were doing ok. My boss liked me, gave me extra hours and responsibilities. One day some dumbass kid ran over my foot with the forklift, broke my ankle. Doc said it would take months to heal right. The bossman felt bad about it, like it was his fault, so he gave me a job I could do, gimpy leg and all, fixing broken palettes. New palettes cost about $22 and there were always broken ones laying around. Good times ‘til my boss had a heart attack and died. The new owner fired me.”

The sun was taking away the shade so we moved our chairs to another cottonwood. I could see his house, a utility shed, and a wire pen with a couple of dozen chickens pecking at the ground.

Dunc pointed to the house and said, “We had a little money set aside and put it down on this place; house, barn, four acres. It was touch and go for a couple of years. We almost lost the place; fell in arrears more than once but made it through. I couldn’t find a steady job so I started going around to warehouses offering to fix their busted palettes. Two months trying and nobody took the bait. In the meantime I picked up broken palettes from dumpsters all over town. Then I had an idea. Why not show up with a pickup load of rebuilt palettes and trade them one for one for broken ones plus $10 each for the good ones. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was a good deal. It was good for me, too. My only cost was for the spiral nails and my time. I had lots of that.

“I did that for a year or so, barely getting by. Been doing better every year after. Got contracts with a couple of small warehouses; going for a Walmart contract. If I get that I’ll need to hire some help.”

Dunc went to get us another beer. Just for something to do I tried to estimate how many palettes Dunc had on his lot but he was back before I could finish my calculation.

Now that we know what to call it, I said, “How are you doing with PTSD, Dunc?”

“Oh, sometimes good, sometimes bad. It’s dogged me all my life. I couldn’t keep a job; pissed off all the time. Some nights I didn’t want to fall asleep, you know why. Next day I was a wreck, started fights, got fired. Drank too much. Just pissed at the world. You know, Mex, all my life I’ve wondered who I might be if not for the goddam war. I’m a goddam civil engineer for god’s sake.

“Marsha’s the one who kept me halfway sane. I don’t know how, she understands what I need when I need it. She’s there. Hate to say it but I thought a lot about killing myself. Last few years though, I’m not pissed anymore. I just feel bad sometimes about the things I did over there. It’s different, you know? Anger’s not the same as grief; grief’s a lot heavier. It’s less now. I guess I’ve paid off some of what I owe.”

The moment over he looked up and gave me a little smile and said, “Whatever happened to Dr. Tim?”

That wasn’t his real name and I don’t remember now why we called him Dr. Tim. He was a few years older than the rest of us; a sage, a guru of sorts. After we were discharged Dunc and I fell in with a small group of anti-war students and Dr. Tim. They weren’t full blown hippies but they occupied an area between pro-war patriots and the anti-war protestors. They dressed down fashionably like hippies but bathed regularly, drank cheap wine, liked to party. Guys like us, back from that lousy war, were guests of honor. There was sex, drugs and rock & roll enough for everybody.

One night after a party, Dunc and I crashed at Dr. Tim’s house. About two o’clock Dunc had a flashback. He sat up hollering, “Incoming! Incoming!” He jumped up and started pushing the furniture against the door, yelling and crying at the same time. Dr. Tim rushed in and got him in a tight bear hug, talking softly. In a little while, Dunc went slack in is arms and began sobbing so hard I started sobbing, too. Whatever he had, I had it, too.

“Dr. Tim? Don’t you remember? He was grad student at UCLA, working on his Master’s, Dunc. Psychology, maybe Sociology, I think. Spence told me a long time ago that the VA hired him right out of college. Still there. Heads up a big department.”

“All the pills and stuff he had. Really good weed, too. I think we were like lab rats to him. Remember the time he tried to give us LSD? I said hell no, but Mex, you took it. I thought you were gone for good. All the while Tim had his arm around your shoulder, humming some shit; rocking you side to side, the crazy music.”

My brain felt like it exploded when the LSD hit my nervous system. Everything glowed. The green carpet, the white beanbags, my shoes, the posters on the wall shimmered intensely like hyped up neon on the edge of bursting. I was afraid. I closed my eyes but the electric colors continued, swirling, combining. I heard Dr. Tim murmuring over and over, “It’s ok. Just let it go, let it go. Everything is possible. Let it go. Everything you see is real. Let it go.”

I don’t know when it happened but I began to enjoy the experience. Everything was new. Everything was possible as soon as I let it go. My mind was free to go anywhere it wanted; no barriers, no warnings, no stop signs, no looking back. Everything was possible. Hours later, when I felt normal again it was with a clarity I had never experienced before. It would be more than ten years before I had another flashback.

The sun was setting now. We moved our chairs under the shade again and continued talking about the other people we knew, Russ, Max, Spence, Marc, and Sergio. I told him about our reunion in Florida and how my lawn was set on fire, the dorky fire chief, and the neighbors’ little spat in my back yard.

“I wish I’d been there. I haven’t seen anybody but you since ’72. Next time see if you can get the guys to come out here. Not much to see but sand and jack rabbits but, hell, we can have fun just laughing at each other. I’m being polite now, Mex, but I cracked up when I saw you getting out of your car, your belly hanging over your belt, squinting like Punxsutawney Phil on Groundhog Day.”

I agreed that it would be fun to get together again, said I’d update the guys about his whereabouts as soon as I got home.

As we walked to my car I saw his sign again: Caesar’s Palettes. I had to ask.

“Where did that come from?”

He turned towards the barn, hands on his hips. Real proud. “When Marsha and I wound up here all we had was a few bucks and this.”

He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a five dollar Poker chip. Caesar’s Palace.

“Just about all we had left after Vegas. Don’t remember if I thought it or Marsha. Either way it worked.”

Driving north on FM78 I pulled over to the side of the road a mile or so from Dunc’s place.
I felt bad for him. I felt bad for me. I felt bad for everybody.