THE FRESHMAN CHEMIST
My brother, having just passed college chemistry, swore that adding sugar to a car's radiator was a cheap alternative to antifreeze, and to prove it he'd drive me home on a minus-30-degrees day.
He fired up his old car, dumped in five pounds of sugar and, as we drove out of town, went into a sonorous explanation about how sugar keeps water from freezing.
The road was solid ice and we had 100 miles to go, so I struggled to believe him.
Forty miles later, as the sun disappeared, the car's heater quit and ice formed inside the car.
Hoping like hell we'd make the final miles, I went into prayer and watched the road struggle by.
The heap waited until we were 4 miles from my town before the engine blew. Huge columns of steam poured from under the hood, froze and settled back onto the sedan. Within seconds, the car was an iceberg on wheels.
We waited an hour for a ride, but storm warnings had closed the road.
Finally, fearing an icy death, we kicked open the frozen doors and walked.
Two nightmarish hours later, we staggered into my home like Siberian ghosts, and I heard nothing about chemistry since.
THE BELLE OF THE BALL
One of the prettiest girls in high school asked me to take her to the Senior Prom.
Ecstatic, I pranced around the school for days like a three-legged rooster.
With hormones raging and intellect diminishing, I spent every dime I had, about $1,000 in today's money, on a tux, flowers, dinner reservations and stuff.
The heavenly night arrived, and off we went to the dance.
We walked into the ballroom, the music began and we strolled onto the floor.
Then the belle spotted her old boyfriend dancing across the hall.
She trotted to him, and in a few minutes they ran out the door.
Years later, when I was a professional gambler in Reno, I saw the girl again. She was a streetwalker, but she recognized me right away.
She started babbling an apology, but I was too excited to listen. In the game of Texas Hold 'Em, I had just been dealt a straight flush.
After a year of college, I wanted to be a hero, so....
A WARRIOR'S VOW
My first girlfriend broke up with me on 8 October 1966. The next day I flunked a college philosophy exam and joined the Marines. I was tossed out of the Marines because of my speech impediment, but soon afterward, after two rejections and two appeals for the same reason, I became an Army private.
I remember entering boot camp swearing allegiance and my life's blood to God, country and that girl. I was going to make all three proud.
Thirty-five years later, I found my old flame again. Like the other two in the trifecta, she barely remembered me.
I WANT TO BE N AIRBORNE RANGER
After boot camp and combat medical school, I signed up for Officer Candidate School - OCS. I ultimately wanted to complete Ranger school where I could learn the best techniques for killing America's enemies.
Every morning in OCS, a sergeant would come around and inspect our gear. For each demerit, the errant recruit would have to do 30 pushups.
I got 36 demerits during the first inspection.
After 1,000 pushups even my eyelids hurt.
Anyway, I was tossed out of OCS because of the speech impediment again and ended up patching battle casualties four hours from the front.
One day a little guy I had known in OCS and who had finished Ranger school came in with a serious infection. So he hung around for a while.
A week later I had time, so I sat by his bed for a few minutes.
"You know, Peck," he said, "I don't know what I'll do if this war ever ends. All I do is crawl out in the bush every night and cut every VC (Viet Cong) throat I can. And, to tell you the truth, I love it."
Then he hauled out his ditty bag and proudly showed me a long necklace of ear lobes severed from his prey.
If I'd finished Ranger School, I might have made a necklace, too.
THE GENERAL
The Vietnam War offered horror for everyone. Its misery ignored all social and military rank.
One night, a mortally wounded officer was carried in and lowered to the floor. I looked at his bloodied face and heard death take him.
Other soldiers were dying and hurting, so I left the corpse for a while. When I returned, a general had flown in and stood sobbing over the dead officer, a lieutenant, his son.
I felt no sympathy for the father. Deep grief comes from the unexpected.
The general had made killing his profession. He wore a West Point ring to prove it.
There was no surprise on the floor.
GOOD INTENTIONS
The Army tried to be decent if a boy got shot up and wasn't expected to live. Once in a while they'd fly his family in for a last goodbye.
This led to some ghastly scenes.
It was bad enough to see their own, mowed low by the machines of war. But to walk the 100-yard stretch to the bedside of their beloved between rows of other mutilated men was almost unbearable.
One guy had been hit by a mortar that left him critically paralyzed and without legs. He lay completely enshrouded with IV (intravenous) bottles in a special bed that could be rotated for easier care.
The guy next to him had taken a bullet right straight between the eyes. He was alive and always smiling but had the indecorous habit of messily retrieving and eating his own feces, which he called "candy," the only word he could say.
The beautiful young wife of the first guy came in daily for about a week. She sat by his bed and cried until he died, then went home an old woman.
THE GUY WHO DIDN'T LISTEN
One day an older sergeant came in on a stretcher. He didn't have a mark on him.
I said, "What's wrong with you?"
The soldier groaned, "I have an aneurysm and the doc says I gotta stay flat in bed."
I came back a while later and the old sarg said, "Doc, I gotta stand up for just a minute. I got a kink in my ass."
I found the neurosurgeon, who told the man to lie still.
He didn't listen, stood up and died.
A LETTER
Dear family of a Vietnam War casualty,
I was with your son when he died.
I was the one who killed him.
I can rationalize it now that I'm old, but then I was just a kid.
Your son was carried in all shot up and I was keeping him alive with a manual pump.
The doctor said, "Quit."
And I did.
Stacks of your son's personal mail sat in a small canvas bag, unread and tied to his stretcher. I could tell he was loved, and, as I put the pump away, I reminded him.
He quit breathing immediately, but I stayed with him until he died completely.
I later found his name etched in war memorials. He was not forgotten.
I have tried to live my life for both your son and me. We have traveled, laughed, learned a lot, and made some awful mistakes, but overall, I think he's pleased.
I want, in this note, to thank you for having your son. I would not have had such an expansive life if he hadn't been along to push me.
Devotedly,
Your surrogate son
DEAD CENTER
Asian fog was strange. It sometimes covered only the first 3 feet off the ground. I could wade through it like a vaporous river and, coincidentally, it was the depth of a dead man's bed.
After the bodies had been hauled off, the beds of the fresh dead were quickly shoved outside to be cleaned and aired for reuse. As workers scurried with the soaps and brushes, the fog would enshroud the cots.
Then the fog would softly erupt at the spot on the bed where the GI had died and make little curls above the mattress. It was the strangest thing to see the fog puff softly over the dead centers of numerous vacated beds.
Fog must be aghast that, after a million years, people are still having wars.
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