Cracker

This newbie just arrived on base.  He looked older than the rest of us, and was.  Word had it he was 27 and on his second ‘nam tour, having volunteered for this one – which fed suspicions that he was out-and-out-crazy, hopelessly gung-ho about stomping out the commies, or, as an “old guy” with E-4 rank, was paying the price for some bad behavior State-Side and hoping to clean the slate with UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) – which could also mean he was on a “lifer” career trajectory and hit some landmines on his career path along the way.

He came with an engineer detachment assigned to throw up cheap wooden hootches for the officers on base.  We, the rest of us, were sleeping on cots in musty tents surrounded by sandbags stacked three-feet high.

The moment he opened his mouth we knew he came from some backwater burg below the Mason-Dixon.  Was Kentucky, outskirts of Harlan, come to find out – miner’s son. He was always smiling away as if the facial muscles knew no other configuration, and cracking yokel jokes that fell dead on our ears.  This FNG (fuckin’ new guy) seemed so happy to be there, like a kid in summer camp, this camp being the headquarters base of the 101st Airborne Division, in Con Thien Province, Vietnam.  Well, I thought, if he felt he’d hit the jackpot, more power to him, or maybe not (refer back to conjecture about “crazy”).

Every GI worth his salt would get a nickname of some sort.  Other guys on base had nicknames like “Jake, the Snake”, “Grub”, “Red Dog”, “Drag-Ass”.  Was an honor to be slapped with a label, the more unflattering the better. Our FNG from Kentucky got the moniker “Cracker” right from the start, because he was white, as backwoods as you can get, and when not jabbering in his drawl about something or other, he’d be humming or singing country songs or gospel hymns.  And at times we’d hear him yodeling early in the morning.  He was the base’s crowing rooster.

Well, have to say, nothing not to like about our FNG. The GI’s on base, lifers too, took to him right away.  Why even the badass boys from the Bronx and Philly gave him a temporary pass not to harass on discovering he was guileless and posed no harm to city dudes with dark skin. Not that they would hang out with him.

From the start we’d known he wasn’t really gung-ho, and later found out he knew diddly about the war and our reason to be there, and didn’t even give voice to the Southern good ole boy refrain about saving the world for democracy, fighting off commies before they reached our shores and all of that.  Just thought it patriotic.

I was a draftee putting in my time.  Didn’t have the intestinal fortitude – OK, balls – to head for Canada or stonewall the Selective Service bureaucrats and hold out indefinitely.  My brother Brendan had come back with a serious limp and a leg that needed more surgery. A booby trap got him. Only weeks after getting my college degree, they were licking their chops to snatch me up with a draft notice, and snatch me up they did.  They also threw the barbed hook to my youngest brother, Sean, which sent my war-doubting folks into a dither and a spiral of anger.

Most of us in camp were draftees, putting in in-country time and marking it daily on “short-timer calendars”, starting Day One.  Not the best idea, for time was an enemy to close observers of its passing.  The grunts in the bush knew this exponentially more than we did, the REMF’s (rear echelon mother fuckers) who had it damn easy, comparatively.

Cracker bought a used guitar for five bucks from Red Dog, who was very “short”, only a week away from going back to The World. The guitar wouldn’t stay tuned in the heat and humidity, but that didn’t stop Cracker from plucking, strumming and re-tuning after every song.  I’d found my guitar in the trash by the shitter.  It was missing a string and had a crack in the backside. I fixed it with a glue patch and mail-ordered new strings.  I got back to the chords I’d worked on from the instruction guide I had in college.

I’d hear Cracker playing his down-home tunes when alone in the bunker at night. I’d join him from time to time and follow his chord sequence as skills allowed.  He taught me a few songs from Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and his girlfriend’s favorite, Hank Williams.  Back home they’d sing “Jambalaya” and “Move It On Over” during long Sunday afternoon rides and parking in Cracker’s pickup truck behind Lenny’s Lunch in Harlan.

It was just the pleasant distraction I needed to get my mind off my place in time and back into The World, though I’d never been a big country-western music fan.

Oh, yes, about his girlfriend. She was only 18 years old.  He was on leave just after his first Army tour of Vietnam. He decided to re-enlist after she’d told him she was pregnant and wanted to marry.  Jobs were precious few in his neck of the woods, he said, and besides, the Army paid a big bonus for re-upping and promised a quick promotion and pay increase for opting to go back to Vietnam. And he’d send money home to his sweetheart Jocelyn and for the baby on the way.  She kept saying, it was only a year. She could wait.

Three months into his tour, I found Cracker dead-drunk one night after midnight, circling his “song studio” bunker, talking to himself and falling face-down in the sand a number of times.  At first he didn’t seem to know I was there or who I was.  I picked him up from a fall against the sandbags and asked what the hell was going on.  He managed to mouth the name “Jocelyn” and the words, “somebody else”.  I dragged Cracker to his cot so he could sleep it off.  His buddies assured me they’d look after him.  His drunken words needed no further explanation.

Next morning, he told me he’d received a “Dear John” letter from Jocelyn, saying she found another guy she’s madly in love with, and they would be getting married in three months, and that Earl had no problem with her being pregnant by another man and would help her take care of the baby. What’s more, she was terribly sorry (repeated three times with tiny drawings of tears around the words) and of course she’d make sure he’d be able to visit his child.  They’d work out the legal details later. No problem.  After all, you’re in a war zone and have enough to worry about.

Cracker stopped playing his “geetar” for weeks.  When he did go back to playing and singing in his studio bunker, it was Hank’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart” over and over and over again ad nauseum.  I stayed away from the studio for a while.  He needed room and some time, I knew.  Weeks later, I stopped by his tent to see how he was doing.  Not bad, I thought.  We had a beer together and that was it.

I joined him in the studio a few evenings when off-duty or having no perimeter guard duty.  He’d go on and on about his love for her and his baby.  I didn’t say much, except “I’m sorry to hear about it, Cracker”.  I couldn’t think of much else to say to comfort him.  I couldn’t imagine a Dear John from a girlfriend or wife back home – much less a sudden blind-side and betrayal from a lady with my baby.  I suggested he have a talk with the base chaplain. Never knew whether he followed the advice.

Must admit I missed our chummy get-togethers, strumming and singing in the studio before his world back home fell apart, and missed the companionship.  It offered brief respite from the war and my longing for home and family.  I had broken up with my girlfriend nine months before getting my draft notice, so it was ancient history.

Funny thing is, on the face of it Cracker and I didn’t really have that much in common:  I was a college-educated Yankee from Connecticut, and he was a high-school dropout from the Kentucky backwoods.  But – don’t mean nothin, as we’d say in GI slanguage.

At nightfall, after a scorching day filling sandbags and digging trenches for an upcoming division inspection, I went back to my tent, aching to drop into my cot.  Before sinking into oblivion, I could swear I heard plucked notes and chords from Cracker’s bunker.  He seemed to be having trouble working his fingering while humming the notes intermittently.  I pushed myself off the cot and sat up to listen.  No, it was definitely not your “Your Cheatin’ Heart” nor anything close to it.

Next few evenings the Howitzers on base were so loud I couldn’t hear my thoughts, and mortar rounds dropped down on us as a reminder that we were still at war.  Following intuition – often wrong, I admit – I continued to give Cracker some breathing room, but I would do my level best to keep him from falling deeper into a bottomless foxhole of despair.

We lost touch for a while nonetheless, only because Cracker was working on the other side of the base, and his crew was under pressure to finish the building project assigned. They were putting in lots of extra time to meet the brass’s deadline. I’d catch him coming and going now and then.  No time for humming and strumming.

In the meantime, I was getting short.  I was down to four weeks when I received DEROS papers (Date of Return from Overseas) and a scheduled flight to board that Silver Bird back to The World.   I tried to track down Cracker a few times but couldn’t find him.  One night I found him – or heard him – at the bunker.  As I approached, I could hear him playing and singing.  It wasn’t a Hank Williams’ song, and it didn’t even sound country.  I recognized it – oh yeah, it was a Beatles’ song, “When I Fell”.  Must have been the one he’d been working on for weeks, and now was managing the difficult notes and chords without a slip.

A big departure from Jocelyn’s music, hers and his – theirs.