The Forgiven Read online

  The text of the brochure described Sydney as “laid back, soft and warm, like her bikini clad beauties basking in the sun on endless South Sea beaches. At times she is daring and shows off, like the surfers hanging ten on the big waves, and she’s dazzling as the colorful sails of ritzy yachts plying the tropical waters.

  “Uptown, in the parks, lunch timers lie in the shade of palms and eucalyptus trees, while lawn bowlers play their gentle game on manicured grass, as the self-righteous on soap box pedestals rail about the Vietnam War and other topics of the day.

  “Sydney is proud, up front, and loud and clear as the ocean crashing against her jagged cliffs on wild, stormy nights.

  “The nightlife of the city centers around Kings Cross, the entertainment district, where in the private clubs and pubs, champagne-sipping socialites rub elbows with beer-drinking cowboys on holiday from the bush, and American servicemen on leave from Vietnam – a mix that makes the ‘Cross’ unique.”

  Kings cross sounded like the place for me. As soon as I got out of the cab and before I could get into a bar, I was accosted by two hippie chicks and a dude with a black and white peace sign painted on his entire face.

  Apparently they had heard my American accent when I talked to the cabbie.

  “Get out of Vietnam! Fuck your bombs and napalm!” they shouted, “get out of Sydney! Baby killer! What makes you think you’re welcome here?”

  I was so taken aback that I didn’t know what to say. I tried to get away, but they followed me, nipping at my heels like dogs, barking their antiwar, anti-American diatribe. I ducked into a bar. They started to come in after me, but apparently the bartender knew they were trouble. He shooed them away at the door.

  “Hounding you about the war?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Yeah, well that’s their routine. Can I get you a drink?’

  “I’ll have a beer, a Foster’s – that’s the only Australian beer I know.”

  He served me the beer, along with a complimentary bowl of mixed nuts. I gobbled up a few handfuls in lieu of supper, and washed them down with one beer, then another. I was trying to settle my nerves, which were a little frayed from my encounter with the hippies.

  “I didn’t expect to encounter so much animosity about the war here in Sydney,” I said to the bartender.

  “There are some who are against it, but most Australians support it, I think. I do, for sure. To be quite honest, it’s good for business having you Americans here for R&R.”

  I looked around. Judging from the haircuts and conversation I overheard, in voices without Aussie accents, quite a few GIs were in the bar. What the bar lacked, however, was women, so I headed for another bar in search of the female companionship the special services representative said was so plentiful in Sydney. Before leaving, I peeked outside to see if the hippies were still there. They had gone, so I moved on. I was soon approached in the middle of the block by two flamboyantly-dressed street walkers. They looked like twins. They competed for my attention by playfully rubbing their bodies against mine, and whispering into my ear the price of certain sex acts, including the price for both of them. I was tempted, but I recalled what I’d been told, that there were plenty of wholesome Australian women to date for free. I still hoped for that, so I broke away from the hookers.

  The next bar I came to had a flier on the door advertising a rock ‘n’ roll band called the Kangaroos. I could hear them from out on the street, and they sounded pretty good, so I went in.

  There were women dancing, some with men and some with each other. It looked like the place for me. I found a stool at the bar, sat down, and ordered a Foster’s. What else? After another, I got up enough nerve to go to a table at which four women sat, to ask one of them to dance. In unison they told me to “…fuck off GI!”

  After this, and my encounter with the hippies, I got the distinct impression that GIs and the Vietnam War weren’t very popular in Sydney, so I kept a low profile for the rest of my R&R.

  CHAPTER 4

  After I returned to the States and was discharged from the Air Force, I enrolled at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale on the GI Bill. It had a well-earned reputation for being a party school, but it was also a haven for hippies, and a hotbed for the antiwar movement. There were also many returning veterans like myself, which made for an interesting mix of students.

  As to partying, ex-GIs did plenty of that at a bar called The Club. Women went there too, and after my experience in Australia, it was nice to know that they liked us. I soon met the acquaintance of a townie named Trudy. When we first met she asked me the basics: “where ya from, “who’s your favorite group,” and “what’s your sign?”

  “Springfield, the Young Rascals, Scorpio,” I replied.

  “Scorpio?” she responded smiling, and she lifted an eyebrow and made a clicking sound with her tongue against her teeth.

  “The sign of sex,” she said bluntly.

  “Really? Since when?

  We both laughed.

  “And death,” she added. “Ruled by the planet Pluto. It’s one of the water signs. Scorpes have a strong feminine side too.” Something I didn’t particularly like hearing, being kind of macho, but I liked hearing Trudy talk. She had a sweet, southern Illinois accent. Carbondale was closer to Memphis than Chicago, sparing her that unpleasant twang, which I was sure that I had, being from the plains of central Illinois.

  “What’s your sign?” I asked in return.

  “Aquarius,” she said with apparent pride.

  “So what are Aquarians all about?”

  “Compassion, mostly, but right now I’m a thirsty Aquarian. I need a drink.”

  When I stood up to let her out of the booth we were sitting in, my eyes followed her as she made her way through the crowd to the bar. Her tall, slender, well-shaped figure moved gracefully and she left a trace of perfume behind that I recognized as patchouli oil, which was what Chelsea wore.

  Chelsea was the last woman I had been with, in July in San Francisco, the night I got back from Vietnam. I had met her in Haight-Ashbury while wandering around half-drunk, like a tourist wanting to see what real hippies looked like up close, and I literally stumbled upon one sitting on a curb – Chelsea, and she got me stoned on hash and we wound up body surfing together on her waterbed. Those waves had long petered out and I was marooned on dry sand. It was high time to get wet again.

  I laughed to myself about my lewd, double entendre musings, but I was serious about my intentions. I fully intended to live up to the Zodiacal characteristics Trudy said were peculiar to Scorpios, excluding the death aspect, unless I died doing it with her, which I fantasized about while watching her walk to the bar. Her long blond hair fell down her back, and my eyes followed it to her hips. While waiting for the drinks, she subtly moved her hips to the music playing on the juke box; a slow, jazzy sensuous tune featuring a sexy saxophone.

  When she returned with her drink and sat back down, I cozied up to her, and she responded in kind. Soon we were kissing and oblivious to anyone else around. We had become acquainted fast, which was the trend in this age of fly-by-night sex. I asked her if she wanted to go some place else more private. My place was what I had in mind, but she had other plans.

  “My place would be nice,” she whispered, close to my ear.

  We got up and went outside. I took a deep breath, and at once, the cool autumn air intensified the high I felt from the alcohol.

  “Ahhh, what a rush!”

  The sidewalk was crowded, and we stepped back against the front of the bar to avoid being swept along.

  “Where you parked?” Trudy asked.

  “I walked tonight,” I said.

  “I’m parked over there.” We walked across the street to a yellow Volkswagen beetle. She unlocked the door, let me in and we drove off. Confined to such a small space without drinks we both became a little s
hy and conversed somewhat nervously about trivial things. Six blocks west of Illinois Avenue, she turned up a long, worn, gravel lane to the back of a wooded lot where a little green trailer sat, lighted by a lamp on a utility pole which shone amidst a sugar maple whose bright yellow leaves, some falling, gave off a dried, musty smell – the smell of autumn.

  “Home sweet home,” Trudy said.

  This was her home away from home in Carbondale, she told me. Her parents lived on the outskirts of town, but being devout, church-going folk, they didn’t approve of her lifestyle, so she had moved out her senior year in high school – the year before. She was only 18 and worked as a waitress at a diner. Bartenders didn’t care if she wasn’t 21; she looked it.

  As soon as we stepped inside the trailer I could see that the place was strictly decorated in astrology motifs. The walls were adorned with black light posters of psychedelic green, purple, blue, pink, orange and yellow Gothic art representing the twelve Zodiac signs. The mystical new wave music Trudy played added to the cosmic atmosphere.

  “Have a seat,” Trudy said, motioning to the couch. She lit a stick of incense and some candles, then went to the kitchenette and came back with two glasses and a bottle of wine, which she placed on the coffee table. She opened a small wooden box and produced a joint, assuming that I partook. We smoked and drank and Trudy spoke of astrology, of course, and how compatible Scorpios and Aquarians were, especially when the sun is in such-and-such position and this planet is aligned with that one and it’s in retrograde. The thought of all of it, along with the wine, pot and incense smoke and new wave music made my head swim. I sat back and Trudy placed her hand softly against my cheek. “Let’s go where it’s more comfortable.”

  She took my hand and led me into the bedroom where we undressed, lay down and after much creative foreplay made love until we were both satisfied – as satisfied as two stoned people could be. We then fell asleep, and in the morning I slipped away without waking Trudy, and walked home in the crisp autumn dawn, my favorite time of year, when the Sun in is Scorpio, the sign of sex.

  Not all of the women who came to The Club were necessarily pro-vet, as I would eventually find out, although they initially seemed to be. On Halloween night, while smoking a joint in the alley behind the bar with a small group of people, it was handed to me by a woman who happened by. I couldn’t tell if she was a hippie or just dressed up like a gypsy for Halloween. She had dark hair like a gypsy would have, but her eyes, visible from moonlight, were blue, and her skin was white.

  After a few tokes she exclaimed, “Wow, this is some dynamite shit!”

  “Yeah, we call it ‘‘Nam bomb,’” one of the guys smoking said.

  “Were you guys in Vietnam?” she inquired.

  I really didn’t want to think or talk about Vietnam tonight. Sometimes it made me angry, and I didn’t want to be angry -- not on my birthday which began at midnight -- but I answered her question anyway.

  “Yeah.” Then I tried to change the subject. “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Cathy.”

  She wouldn’t let me change the subject.

  “Must be pretty bad over there, huh?”

  “Yeah. So where ya from, Cathy?”

  “St. Louis. Did you kill anyone?”

  “No.”

  “What branch were you in?”

  “Air Force.”

  “Oh, the bombers. Drop any napalm?”

  “Me? No, I wasn’t a pilot.”

  The tone of the conversation was changing, and I knew where it was headed.

  “I saw a photograph in a magazine of children screaming as they ran down the road from a Vietnamese village after it had been hit by that shit,” Cathy said, her big blue eyes peering intensely at mine, as if I were responsible. “Seems like an awful lot of innocent people are getting hurt by that fucked up war.”

  “That’s right,” I shot back. “Thousands were executed by Communist forces at Hue because they chose not to side with them when the Tet Offensive of ’68 began.”

  I could feel my temperature rising. “Hey, what the hell, did you stop here to pick a fight?”

  “No. I’m sorry.” She smiled and put her hand on my arm. “I guess I got a little carried away. Hey, would you like to go to a Halloween party?”

  I looked around. The little pot party had fizzled out. With the joint smoked, the others had gone inside.

  “Uh, sure, why not.”

  “Wanna walk?” Cathy asked. It’s not too far.”

  “Okay.”

  It was a blustery night. Most of the leaves had fallen from the trees by now, and some of them were blowing across the street making skit-scat-skittering sounds. A dog barked; it sounded large, and chills ran up my spine. Halloween was in the air.

  “So where’s this party?” I asked.

  “Bucky’s dome.”

  “Bucky’s dome?”

  “Buckminister Fuller,” Cathy said incredulously. “Surely you’ve heard of him. The world-famous architect? He’s a design professor here.”

  “Oh yeah. He built that brown thing at the corner of Forest and Cherry.”

  “That’s the one.”

  Coincidently I lived across the street from it. Soon we were there. I looked over at my house and in one of the windows my black cat sat puffed up and looking perfectly Halloweenish; yellow eyes glowing like a jack-o-lantern’s. I pointed him out to Cathy.

  “Far out,” she said with a snicker.

  I looked at the dome. I had grown accustomed to seeing it every day going to and from campus, but tonight, stoned as I was, its globular, multi-faceted, brown shingled facade resembled a large exotic mushroom growing in the moonlight, with classical music wafting from inside.

  I followed Cathy through the door. It appeared so much larger on the inside, and at once I felt as if I had stepped into another world.

  The interior was lighted by sconces, and a singular moon-like globe hanging from the center of the ceiling directly above a large round table with a punch bowl where people, dressed in a variety of costumes, milled about.

  Suddenly I realized Cathy had left me alone, so I made my way to the punch bowl for a little social lubrication. As I ladled a glass of the punch, not the least bit concerned about what it might contain, I thought I heard someone faintly calling my name. I looked around and spotted my roomy Jan standing off by himself. He nodded at me and smiled. It was nice to see a familiar face; one that wasn’t made up or masked. Other than Cathy’s, Jan’s appeared to be the only one that wasn’t. Oh yes, and mine. I sauntered over to Jan.

  “What’s happening, Timothy?” I asked, referring to the guru Leary, who he had dressed as before we left the house and went our separate ways. I had no idea this was the party he was attending.

  “Everything, man, everything is happening everywhere you are when you’re hip to being there,” was his reply to my rhetorical question.

  “Well, I guess that pretty much covers it,” I said. “So, which one of these creatures is Fuller?”

  “Oh, Bucky’s in Boston.” Jan knew this because he was in the design program. “His assistant is throwing the party. That’s him over there, dressed like Raggedy Ann.”

  “Okay.”

  “So what brings you to this party, Mick? I thought you were going to The Club tonight?”

  “Some little hippie chick. That’s her at the punch bowl. I met her at The Club.”

  “Oh shit, that’s Cathy Riggins, she’s in design too. What the fuck was she doing there? She hates vets. Damn, here she comes now. I’m gone, man, I don’t wanna talk to her when I’m trippin’, or any other time for that matter, about that fucked up war.” Apparently Jan had experienced her wrath, also being a veteran of Vietnam.

  Jan quickly got lost in the crowd as Cathy, who was drunk, came straight to me and got into my face about what else, Vietnam.
She sounded like the Communist broadcast propagandist, Hanoi Hannah, who I’d heard many times on the radio over there.

  “You imperialist warmongering air pirate pig. How can you drop napalm on innocent children and kill old men and women? How can you justify poisoning the countryside with Agent Orange, and turning Vietnamese housewives and teenage girls into whores for the pleasure of marauding GIs who murder their husbands and fathers?”

  She was all over me like a yapping little dog (reminiscent of the hippies I had encountered in Sidney), and I backed away not knowing what to say. I soon found myself backing out the door, then Jan came outside, having seen what had happened.

  “I told ya, man, that chick hates vets.”

  Stunned by the suddenness and violence of it all, I shivered with anger that guys like Jan and me were being treated so badly by snotty little hippie chicks like Cathy.

  As time went by, the anger inside of me festered like an ulcer in my stomach, which led to excessive drinking in a futile attempt to numb the pain; it only made matters worse. I spent more time at The Club and other bars than in the classroom, and I soon went on academic probation. To address the situation, my guidance counselor called me in for consultation. He knew that I was a vet, and he was one too; of the Korean War. Because of my drinking and anger, he concluded that I was finding it difficult to readjust.

  “It’s being diagnosed as PTSD -- post traumatic stress disorder,” he said. “If you’d like, I can arrange for you to get some counseling for it at a vets’ center in Marion.”