Purple Daze Read online

  says the president and his shiny-starred

  generals.

  I’ve seen Phil fight when he thinks a guy’s

  putting the rush on me. But I can’t imagine

  him in a steamy jungle shooting at squat,

  brown people in black pajamas, and

  I can’t imagine them shooting back.

  I lose my balance and topple over,

  another casualty of the domino theory.

  Don

  A country-rock band is on stage

  warming up a banjo and washtub bass,

  while I zigzag through a maze of

  frizzy hair and peace signs:

  MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR.

  Good idea.

  I spot Cheryl sitting cross-legged,

  practically in Mick’s lap. His shirt’s off

  and he’s got his arms around her, his lecherous

  fingers pressing hers to the guitar’s neck.

  He’s wailing “Baby Love.”

  She smiles at me and blows on her fingers,

  sore as usual from the steel strings.

  “Mickey says I can keep it while he’s gone.”

  I tell him to get up because I want to see

  if the jerk has a boner and if he does, I’m

  going to kick his zipper inside out, which

  should help him sound more like Diana Ross.

  He laughs hysterically. Like it’s a joke.

  Yeah, right.

  Ziggy

  History.

  I’ve never taken such a hard test.

  I read the True or False section first,

  marking answers opposite to what I think

  is right, so I’d have a chance of passing.

  When I got to the Multiple Choice part,

  I was so tired of not knowing the answers

  I just scratched out letters.

  All of the above.

  None of the above.

  I get an F.

  Fuck.

  Boot Camp

  Drill Sergeant: “Your left!

  Your left! Right! Left!

  Your other left dickhead!

  Sound Off!”

  Platoon: “1-2”

  Drill Sergeant: “Sound off!”

  Platoon: “3-4”

  Drill Sergeant: “Break it down!”

  Platoon: “1-2-3-4-1-2—3-4!”

  Drill Sergeant: “If I die in a combat zone, Box me up and send me home.

  Put me in a set of blues. Comb my hair and shine my shoes.

  Pin my medals on my chest. Tell my mama I done my best.

  Mama, Mama, don’t you cry. Marine Corps’ motto ‘Do or die.’”

  Drill Sergeant: “Sound Off!”

  Platoon: “1-2-3-4-1-2—3-4!”

  Drill Sergeant: “Ain’t no use in lookin’ down. Ain’t no discharge on the ground.

  Ain’t no use in lookin’ back. Jody got your Cadillac.

  Don’t be sad and don’t be blue. Jody got your girlfriend too.

  I used to date a Beauty Queen Now I love my M-16!”

  Drill Sergeant: “Sound Off ...!”

  Blackboard Room 206

  Impromptu Writing: 100 words or less

  Topic: Friendship

  Due: End of Today’s Class

  MY BEST FRIEND

  At first I thought what an easy assignment! Ziggy has been my best friend since elementary school. I can tell her anything, repeat anything. But when I started writing, all these feelings about my mom started coming out. I’m not going to put them down, because they’re personal and I don’t know if you plan to read these out loud. Since I have 48 words left, I will say this—I can count on my mom and that means a lot when you’re a teenager.

  —Cheryl

  LONELINESS

  Now that I’ve lived 17 years, I realize it’s better not to let any one person get too close to you. That way you’ll be used to being by yourself, so when real loneliness marches in to rip your heart out, you won’t feel it.

  —Nancy

  FRIENDSHIP

  I know lots of people, both in and out of school. But I wouldn’t call them all friends. Bubba is more than my brother, because he listens to me like what I’m saying is important. That’s an out- standing quality. Cheryl listens too. But even more than that, she understands when I get hysterical and wipes my tears when I cry. That should be in Webster’s as a definition of best friend.

  —Ziggy

  Nancy

  Phil’s in Vietnam

  in Jungle Fatigues.

  I’m in an apron,

  balancing plates of pancakes.

  The old people order $2.49 specials,

  short-stack, crispy bacon, black coffee.

  I pocket sticky tips: Nickel and dime

  my way to college.

  Don

  Dad’s baking grass brownies for

  tomorrow’s march, while Mom

  paints signs:

  PEACE

  The newspaper shows a police barricade:

  TURN LEFT AND GET SHOT

  My parents think they can walk the 45-mile

  perimeter of “troubled activity” in downtown

  without getting trapped in a crossfire.

  Mom picked flowers for the cops.

  They’re nuts.

  Cheryl

  Thank god Don is still in high school so I don’t have to worry about him getting drafted until after graduation and maybe by then the war will be over and all our soldiers will be home and marrying their girlfriends and moving into gingerbread houses and having kids and growing old together and dying in each other’s arms and being buried in the same cherry-wood casket and more than anything I want this for Phil and Nancy and I promise to write Phil everyday because some guys in Vietnam get lost in their minds and believe jungles and killing are the real world and forget what it’s like back home and I don’t want that to ever happen to him so I’m going to write about Boss Radio’s Top 40 and The Fugitive tracking the onearmed man. ...

  Ziggy

  Ms. Hawes asks us to come up

  with ideas we’d like to research,

  because she thinks we should spend

  more time in the library.

  “It doesn’t have to be long,” she says.

  “Any ideas?”

  Cheryl raises her hand. “How about

  interesting quotes?”

  Don nods. “Yeah, about war?”

  Today we’re peeling and eating roasted

  chestnuts because we’re reading Hemingway’s

  memoir A Moveable Feast.

  Ms. Hawes talks with her mouth full.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  Nancy folds up in her chair.

  “Is old guys dreaming up wars so

  our brothers and boyfriends get shot

  specific enough?”

  Nancy

  I’m teamed up with Don for the research project.

  We meet at the library during lunch,

  where he unearths a quote in a dusty book by

  British historian, James Anthony Froude,

  “Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is

  the only one to whom the torture and death

  of his fellow creature is amusing in itself.”

  The following day we wear black to school,

  as planned. I have a fake bullet hole in my neck,

  food-coloring blood spilling.

  Ms. Hawes asks each pair to read in front

  of the class. Ziggy and her partner chose one

  by John le Carré,

  “You should have died when I killed you.”

  Everyone laughs.

  Me and Don are next. I found this one

  myself,

  “They wrote in the old days that it is sweet

  and fitting to die for one’s country. But in

  a modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting

  in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good

&n
bsp; reason.”

  Ms. Hawes likes it because Hemingway served

  in World War I, so he knows what he’s talking

  about.

  I like it because the room is suddenly quiet

  as a drawn-in breath.

  Phil

  Dear Cheryl,

  5th Week in Hell

  Thanks, doll

  for the pics of roses—

  I can almost smell them.

  I’m lying on an army cot at my outpost.

  Every breath, I suck in a battalion of bugs.

  Damn insects. It’s raining and they decided

  to come in here where it’s dry.

  Last night I about got plugged writing

  a letter using this same flashlight.

  A sniper saw it.

  That would be a helluva way to sign off—

  with a big glob of guts.

  Your friend, Phil

  P.S. I got a nasty paper cut licking

  the flap of Nancy’s envelope.

  Only one letter so far.

  What’s up?

  Ziggy

  Mrs. St. Johns faints in Home Economics when she opens the refrigerator and sees her Oscar Mayer wearing rubbers.

  I mean, grow up!

  Cheryl

  Mom says I’m too young to shave my legs,

  so I bought Nair. Industrial cream in a jar.

  I’m not supposed to pluck my eyebrows either,

  so I use her Lady Schick on the stubble between

  my brows.

  Ziggy says they’re going to grow back thicker—

  that if I keep shaving up there I’ll have a mustache

  between my eyes for the prom.

  Napalm B

  Simple bathtub chemistry concoction:

  gasoline, noun. A colorless, liquid mixture of hydrocarbons, which evaporates and burns easily.

  benzene, noun. A colorless liquid that vaporizes and is set on fire easily.

  polystyrene, noun. A colorless plastic used for insulation and in making toys, household appliances, luggage, and reeds for musical instruments.

  The Pentagon requests bids to manufacture Napalm from 17 U.S. companies. A small company in Michigan called Dow Chemical gets the contract. Before then, Dow was best known as the maker of Saran Wrap.

  One 200-liter cylinder hitting the ground causes mass destruction. Flames roll in a circle approximately 250 feet in diameter. The heat inside the zone ranges from 1,800–3,600°F. Within the zone, there are no survivors.

  Outside the zone, jellied gasoline clings to human skin, melting flesh. Reports document civilians being boiled to death in rivers heated by Napalm.

  Don

  Dad got cracked with a nightstick

  during the protest. Seventeen stitches

  in his scalp.

  Mom calls from the emergency room

  ticked because they weren’t hauled off

  to jail with their friends.

  The doctor signed her petition, though,

  so not all is lost.

  Mom fixes Dad up on the couch

  with an ice pack, puts on Dylan,

  “Like A Rolling Stone.”

  Out come the brownies.

  Phil

  Dear Cheryl,

  Let me tell you about a weapon

  with a killing punch.

  Howitzer: 109 mm. Weight: 27 tons.

  Type of shells: White phosphorus.

  Chemical. High explosive. Illumination.

  Two weeks before I got here, a battery

  killed 900 of the 1600 VC hit. Yesterday

  two companies were sent to take a hill.

  500 strong. Only 67 walked back.

  Took the damn hill though.

  Stay cool—Phil

  P.S. I used to hate Disneyland.

  Now it’s all I think about.

  Nancy

  No one understands why I

  volunteer for extra shifts at work.

  Why I signed up for night class:

  Psych 101.

  Why I wasted tips and weekends

  painting my bedroom salmon,

  then bought a gallon of raven,

  because all that fleshy-pink

  left me too vulnerable.

  Not much time to write.

  Too much time to think

  because shrapnel rockets

  through my brain, ricocheting

  off work, school, bone:

  Is God going to spare P.F.C. Phillip

  C. Rose because I want Him to?

  Cheryl

  Ziggy’s been depressed since

  Mickey enlisted in the Navy:SEE THE WORLD &

  DITCH YOUR DAD

  She sobs into the phone,

  “What if he gets sent to Nam?”

  “Ships don’t go to the

  Demilitarized Zone,” I say.

  “It’s on land.”

  She sniffles.

  “If Bubba gets drafted,

  he’s flying the coop.”

  That’s the first smart thing I’ve heard her brother say.

  Phil

  Cheryl,

  I’ve been awake for 42 hours.

  I stood outpost last night.

  The posts aren’t sandbagged or fortified.

  Just a shelter half-staked, so if it rains

  you won’t get too wet.

  Mine’s staked over a grave.

  I hope those bastards smokin’ pot and burnin’

  their draft cards appreciate how hard it is peein’

  in a bunker even when you’re lying on your side

  and there’s a downhill slope.

  The goddamn mosquitoes are having me for

  a picnic, and we’re out of knock-down spray.

  I’ll probably get Dengue Fever like the lieutenant.

  Love, Phil

  P.S. I don’t tell Nancy the stuff I tell you.

  She thinks I’m on some vacation

  getting this bitchin’ tan.

  Nancy

  I scribble in my journal, watering thoughts

  and letting them sprout, like Ms. Hawes said.

  All at once I’m outside, on my knees,

  yanking weeds, tears turning dirt to mud.I’m sorry, Phil, so sorry,

  it’s an unbearable situation,

  and it’s getting worse every second;

  the only way I can survive is ...

  Before he left I swiped the bandana he

  wore to the concert. It smells like his

  coppery sweat and Lucky Strikes.

  I knot it around an envelope, the

  one with the Amelia Earhart stamp

  I’m afraid to mail,

  and slip them under my pillow,

  sleeping with uncertain synapses.

  Vietnam Service Medal

  Established by Executive order 11231, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 8, 1965. To be eligible for award of the medal, individual must:a. Be attached to or regularly serve for one or more days with an organization participating in or directly supporting military operations; or

  b. Be attached to or regularly serve for one or more days aboard a naval vessel directly supporting military operations; or

  c. Actually participate as a crewmember in one or more aerial flights into airspace above Vietnam and continuous waters directly supporting military operations; or

  d. Serve on temporary duty for 30 consecutive days or 60 nonconsecutive days in Vietnam or contiguous areas, except that the time limit may be waived for personnel participating in actual combat operations.

  In addition, personnel serving in Thailand, Laos, or Cambodia in direct support of operations in Vietnam during the same time period are eligible.