I’ve been remembering my friend Pete today. I’ve written about him before. Pete didn’t die in the war, he came home; but a big part of Pete was left on that hill in South Vietnam and never left that place. That part of him that never came back is what I think about often on Memorial Day. I’ve been corrected that this special day in May is for those who died in battle. I’ll maintain to my last breath, my friend Pete died there, and I honor him on the day.
Pete was a good student and came from a family that was pretty well off financially, and as dysfunctional as any other American family. He didn’t come from a dynasty by any means, but they were secure. Pete had a bright future planned for himself in the family business after he graduated college. In a swipe of patriotic fervor, he volunteered for Vietnam instead.
The guy who came back never went into the family business. He tried construction for a time, but his war injuries proved that a bad choice.
He spent his life selling live bait and beer and potato chips and cigarettes out of a hut, down on the jetty in Venice Florida called the Fish Camp.
Pete also ran a pretty solid pharmaceutical business behind the counter, in the back of his shack down by the rich men’s boats. The bait business provided a pretty solid cover. The drugs didn’t ever make him enough money to be wealthy, or secure, but it kept him in heroin and that was the plan from the jump as far as I could see.
The place was without air-conditioning, and it got pretty hot down there come July and August and the place always smelled like dead fish. The cold beer was lukewarm at best, but Pete got by.
One day years ago Pete and I were sitting on the beach in Venice Florida, smoking weed, letting the roaches burn down in seashells we’d scavenged, where you could use the palm of your free hand to make a cup and deeply inhale the last of the joint.
Pete came home from Vietnam in pretty bad shape from the heroin he met over there. I seemed to think we could wean him off the dope with weed and booze and reds. It was a great plan, but it didn’t work.
The entire left side of Pete’s body was scar tissue from a bomb or something. From his left cheek to his toes.
He walked out of the shower naked one time and just stood there. He told me, “If you’d been drafted to go, I’d have killed you myself and saved you the trouble.” The story goes he saved a guy’s life, and took that shrapnel in the process.
Considering the bad time he was having with the heroin, and what with the skin of half his body blown off, and some of the other stuff he told me about that place, his offer sounded like a kind gesture. I always figured that was how he meant it to be.
Saigon had fallen just a few weeks before and I don’t think he’d talked to anyone about it until we found ourselves alone on that pretty beach on that sunny day. Pete was a few years older than me. Kind of like an older brother.
He took another joint from his T-shirt pocket, lit it, inhaled deeply, and went into a coughing fit. Standing, he reached back in his pants pocket, pulled out a medal he’d won for heroism, reeled back like Ron Guidry on the mound at Yankee stadium and fastballed the chunk of medal and the pretty colorful ribbons into the Gulf of Mexico.
He looked at me and said, “Fuck it…”
I took another hit off the joint.
That’s how the war ended for Pete. The guy I knew from before Vietnam was never heard from again. He went back to the smelly bait shop and stayed there until he died.
Anyway, that’s it for today. Thank you all so much for reading. Here is some free stuff to check out. You know the drill, click the image to open the promo.
Stay safe, it’s getting weird out there!
Bill
Photo by Ryan Stone on Unsplash
Thanks for honoring the walking dead today. They are forgotten all too often.
I graduated HS in 1967.My era had a lot of "Petes" and we were ill prepared for how to help them when they came home... IF they came home.. from the horrors of Vietnam.In exchange for wiping out my college debt I signed up as a nurse and spent 18 months there..One of the most notorious war trials involved a lawyer and serviceman from my little Upper Peninsula home town.I'm coming up on 75...I haven't gotten over Vietnam yet.