works by w.pham

works by william pham, 2005-present

A Damn Fool's Tale

Mr. Gharvin was getting old. He was a retired military man but he never spoke about Vietnam to anyone. His son was born while he was overseas and shortly after his return, his wife left him. He had found a well-paying job and was able to live comfortably while providing for his family of two. He lived in a two-bedroom house in a quiet neighborhood and while his son was still young, he made sure to read to him every night. Now his son was applying to Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, with a good shot at getting into all of them. But then the President declared war on Iraq and Mr. Gharvin's son seemed convinced that he had to enlist. His son was a good kid. He was smart, quick on his feet and just as quick with his wits, polite and honorable. Mr. Gharvin did not want to see him go through the same things he had gone through, so one day he told his son that they needed to have a talk.

They went into the den -- Mr. Gharvin could afford a den -- and sat down on leather chairs.

"Son, I know you're pretty damn well convinced you have to go fight that war --"

"Yes, sir, I am, and with all due respect, nothing you're going to say will change my mind."

"-- Let me finish, son --"

"Sure, dad."

"--Anyway let me tell you a story. I know I've never really told you anything about what went on in Vietnam, because I don't think it's a story worth telling, for the most part. There were a lot of bad things, terrible things, that we did, and they did, but that's not the point. The point is, I had a buddy back there and his name was Bud Woodman and everyone in the unit called him Woody. He was a good kid, good head on his shoulders, but he was real shy, real quiet, didn't talk much. He was from Texas and we figured he'd had a hard time with his parents or something, seeing as how that was the subject that got him the quietest.

"So then there was Tet -- you know, the Vietnamese holiday, with the lunar new year and all. All of the Vietnamese are celebrating, cooking and eating and burning incense and the men playing mahjong all the time and smoking a lot. In that kinda atmosphere, you can't help but cheer up no matter what, so all us military guys loosened up too. We were all in Saigon, so we figured we weren't in any imminent danger. Some of the Khe Sanh guys were preparing for something big, but word from the intelligence guys was that nothing could go down on Tet. Anyway they were wrong.

"The city was lit up with fire and bullets and bombs. City fighting, block by block, is the dirtiest fighting there is, because there's all sorts of windows, and rooftops, and alleyways, and those were people's homes and stores and shops and schools we were fighting in. That particular night, we had all been drinking in a bar when everything went haywire, no one had sent word to us when the fighting had begun. So North Vietnamese commandos were in the area and we were pinned down. There were a couple South Vietnamese with us, and the people working at the bar, and they didn't know what to do either.

"Well, there was one Vietnamese guy, one real wiry guy, who spoke English fluently, real well-educated. Turns out he was a doctor and he wanted to go to the hospital where he worked to see if everything was okay. We called him Duke. When he asked, he asked with iron in his voice. He was dead-set on going and there wasn't anything we could've done to stop him. I'm sure he was worried about his family, too. I mean, we knew for sure he was worried about his family, but I'm getting to that.

"Anyway, Woody said he'd go with him. Woody, the quiet kid, the guy who wouldn't play poker with us because he didn't like to gamble, but he'd deal for all of us. He was shy, yeah, but he was also the kind of guy you knew you could really depend on from just looking at him. His eyes were real clear, all the time, like he knew exactly what was going on at all times. Real on top of everything. Never late, never told a single lie, that kind of thing. Woody just picked up his gun and said, 'You know what Duke, I'll go with you, because I know if I don't, you'll just go alone and I can't accept that.'

"And that was that. None of us stopped him, or volunteered to go with him. I don't remember why. We should have, you know. We were a goddamn unit. But we just waved him on, and waited there, and drank a few more beers while we listened to the whining of bullets and roaring of explosions. They all sounded pretty far away, but we were scared anyway. I was scared.

"Couple of minutes passed. Then ten, and twenty, and half an hour. We were wondering where he could be. The hospital couldn't've been that far away. Maybe Duke stopped to see his wife and kids. Woody would've stayed with him and then gone on with him to the hospital because Woody was that kind of guy. But we were getting to be pretty worried. The guys started talking real nervous talk. Maybe the VC were closer than we thought. Maybe they got hit by snipers who saw the American military guy and figuring the Viet with him was ARVN. Maybe they were dead.

"Must've been at least forty-five minutes, maybe an hour before Duke walked in. There was dust all over his face and his eyes were wet but he wasn't crying. He was carrying someone and his shirt-sleeves were torn and there was blood all over his arms, and then we noticed there was blood all over him, all over his face and shirt and everything, and then we noticed the figure in his arms was Woody. There was a giant piece of shrapnel sticking out of Woody's chest and back, perfect and straight like an arrow. Duke just walked over and laid him on the bar sideways and we stood around just staring like idiots.

"Duke looked up at us and yelled in Vietnamese and we got moving damn fast. We tried to see if we could get the shrapnel out of Woody without killing him but it didn't look like it. It pretty much got him right in the heart. He was bleeding a lot. I think I was crying by that time. Duke told us what happened, while we tried to stop the bleeding.

"They had been walking down the street when a bomb exploded some yards away and Woody acted fast, tackling Duke to the ground. When Woody got himself up off the ground and offered Duke a hand, a second bomb went off and that giant piece of shrapnel impaled him. Duke had ripped the sleeves off of his shirt to try to stop the bleeding but it didn't help much. Debris blocked the way they were going so he headed back.

"Woody died on the bar. Before he died, though, he regained consciousness for a moment, like in a movie, and like in a movie I thought he was going to come back to life and tell us all to go on living, for him, or whatever. But all he said was 'Shit, guys," and then he was dead and we had no answers. Duke was stone-silent. I don't know what happened to him after that, but the one decent thing I can remember about that night was that I told Duke it wasn't his fault.

"And that's the story. We all got out alive except for Woody. I just wanted to tell you that, so you could see what a damn fool war makes of all of us."

Mr. Gharvin leaned back in his chair. His eyes were wet but he wasn't crying. His son looked at him.

"I'm sorry, Dad. This is what I want."

Mr. Gharvin's son stood up and walked out of the room and went to war.