The Preacher Tells a Tale (standard:drama, 2866 words)
Author: deaconburke	Added: Nov 01 2006	Views/Reads: 3166/2095	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
It's the height of the Viet Nam war and in Detroit people gather to tell tales from DaNam. It isn't exactly what it seems.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

"From what I hear of the VVAW, they are a ragtag bunch who can't do more
than have a lot of guys in field jackets show up to burn flags. How the 
devil are they going to get their stories out?" 

"This Seal has an in with congress. He's gonna' get it read into the
congressional record." 

"Now that is interesting. Yeah Jim, I would like to hear what they
gonna' put in that report." I had no idea what happened in the war 
after I left just a few short of years before. I wondered if I might 
learn something from the GIs at the meeting. If nothing else it would 
be a chance for me to get away for a few days. 

I hadn't been in an airplane since I got home from the cross country
flight in 1966. Even though I swore that I would never leave North 
Carolina again, I boarded the whisper jet at the local airport. I 
managed to fly past Detroit and on to Chicago, then of course I changed 
planes and flew back. 

"Hey there Preacher," the old looking young man said. "Damn Jim you
gained a couple of pounds and got old." 

"How am I gonna' get old in seven years." 

"I got no idea man, but you sure managed it." I grinned at him. Truth is
except for the extra twenty pounds, on a frame well able to support it, 
he looked exactly the same. 

"Come on let's get a beer." 

"First the bags, then the beer." I don't expect Jim knew it but I had
the old Colt combat green pistol in the b-4 bag. I should have replaced 
that beat up old bag but what the hell, I hadn't traveled any since I 
returned home. 

"You still got that chicken crap Air Force suitcase. God how we envied
you that bag. You the only one didn't show up in Saigon with a duffle 
bag and a gym bag." 

"That's what happens when you have a brother in the Air Force." I said
it almost seriously. 

We were in a cab headed for the Howard Johnson's, without a beer I might
add, when Jim said, "Preacher we go to be cool here. Lots of these guys 
are wired." 

"Drugs?" 

"I don't think so. They be high on something else. Not sure if its hate
or revenge, but they on some kind of high. Me and you got to stay low." 


"I didn't come a thousand miles to lay low Jim. You got me here, I
expect you to stand up to it." 

"Preacher ain't nobody gonna' do nothing to you, they don't do to me. We
just don't need to be startin' it." 

"Hell Jim, the only way you can know when it's coming, is if you start
it." 

"Preacher, I'm serious these are some bad dudes. We bad too, but there
are a lot more of them. They say over a hundred gonna' give 
statements." 

"Statements about what." 

"Bout what they saw and did in DaNam." 

"Well that's what we are here for isn't it?" 

"Just be careful please." 

"Jim, I'm a changed man. I don't go chasin' after trouble no more." 

"Yeah, and we made the world a better place." 

"Not even a little part of it." 

Half an hour later we were in the bar looking around.  We were about the
only ones there without field jackets. Most were too new looking to 
have seen much time off the rack. The bartender looked terrified. There 
were a lot of rough looking guys with beards and long hair, but they 
seemed pretty harmless to me. Still there was a kind of fire in their 
eyes as if they were on something.  If not drugs it was a crusade. 

One of the men recognized Jim. Jim had been there a couple of days
before he called me.  "Sargent Lester this is my friend Preacher 
Burke." I reached up and shook the slightly younger man's hand. 

"So who were you with?" It was a natural question for him to ask. 

"MACV," It should have been all the answer necessary. 

"What the hell is that?" He looked a little drunk. I quickly began to
assess him. He was about twenty pounds of drunk, overweight. Too much 
soft living since he came home, I thought. If it came to physical 
force, I was more than a match for him. Problem was several more people 
drifted over. 

"That was them pansies that pushed papers in Saigon." The new man who
spoke just looked mean. 

I was surprised to find Jim answer for me. "You open your loud mouth
again honey, and this pansy gonna' put your fat butt in the hospital." 
He looked around just as cold as a morgue slab. "Don't much matter to 
me how many of you 'heroes' go with him..." 

"MACV, was more than paper pushers Lester. Some of them were advisors to
the ARVN before we ever heard of Vietnam. "What year Preacher?" He 
intentionally looked past Jim. He was trying to diffuse the situation. 

"63," I replied but I didn't take my eyes off the others. I noted with
satisfaction that Jim hadn't either.  He still had the right instincts. 
 Peace makers might be a threat to stab you in the back, but the real 
violence came from the men with all the mouth. 

"Preacher was back again in 65 won his self a Pulitzer." 

"Peabody Jim." I corrected him still expecting trouble. 

"Oh you were with the press to? We definitely want to talk to you." 

"Oh we, so you are in charge of this band of soldiers." 

"Not much in charge to it. This was kinda' the idea of some Navy
Officer. He wants to take testimony to help end the war, then take it 
Washington. He's got some kind of pull down there." 

Just as quickly as the tense moment come, it went. Everyone wanted to be
buddies again just a minute after the man calmed it all down. "So you 
are some kind of organizer?" 

"Well VVAW will work with anyone who is serious about ending this war." 

"Man with Washington connections wants to have a meeting and you don't
have a problem with it?" I was more than a little surprised. 

"Well the anti war people are in congress now. We can get this stuff in
the record, it will make it real, not just some spaced out vet's 
ramblings." 

"So it's a hundred vets rambling?" I asked it a little skeptical. It was
easy to be skeptical, if the men in the Howard Johnson lounge were any 
indication of the types doing the testifying. 

"When this dude tells it, it will sound like a million. He is smooth
Preacher. He is gonna' take us down there and we are gonna' be on our 
best behavior. He is gonna' go in there and make it sound like a 
million of us are in the streets. 

"So, is this guy serious or just headline grabbing. You know like body
counts in reverse." 

"Who gives a damn. He has been to see the Paris Guys, so he can get us
heard. Preacher they may all be trying to use us, but so what. We will 
whore for anybody to stop this war and save lives." 

"So what if I don't have anything to tell?" 

"Hell make up something, we ain't gonna' use no names. Nobody is gonna'
send you to jail even if you say you did something." Jim looked at me 
and I shook my head. 

"Well we didn't see anything interesting, and we didn't do anything that
would interest you." 

"Come on preacher everybody knows the ARVN won't fight. We have a story
that they refused to save a wounded American because they didn't want 
to fight." 

I watched Jim shake. It was just a tiny twitch in his face. That is, if
you didn't know him. I was debating whether to let him blow or not. I 
decided not to. "Tell you what, I want to be on a plane out of here 
early tomorrow. You get us in early and we will tell our story." 

"Good for you," he said as he left. 

"Which story we gonna' tell them?" 

"How about the rubber plantation?" 

"Oh, one of my all time favorites." 

"After about five minutes the other vets began milling around. We drank
and listened to their stories. It was men telling a hundred horror 
stories. Probably twenty had been there, but the others had heard about 
the stories they were telling. 

"I had a buddy who was in the third, they went into a village and gang
raped the mayor's daughter to teach him a lesson. You know that just 
wasn't right." There was no way to disagree with that. 

The problem was the same story got told on Marines of several units, a
couple of army units and even a CIA group from Loas. Did it happen, 
most likely yes. Did every unit in Vietnam do it as it sounded that 
night? I don't believe that for a minute. 

"How the hell are they going to turn a hundred guys into the horror
story they want?" I asked it of Jim. 

"Hell preacher, you know it don't take a lot of facts to convince the
Choir." 

"I guess if you get it in the congressional record with a friendly
audience it goes down as gospel." 

"Preachin' to the Choir Preacher." 

The soldiers I met that night were genuine in their desire to make a
difference. I believed that over the course of the interviews each and 
every one of them told the truth as they believed it to be. How it got 
written down is something I don't know. I do know what happened to me 
the next day. 

"Come on in," the tall gaunt man in the field jacket said. "I'm Robert
Thomas, everybody calls me Rob." I shook his hand. 

"Well Rob, I'm David Burke, and this is Jim Everette." 

"I hear you won a peabody for writing about the war?" He asked it
waiting to see my reaction. 

"Not really, I won it for a photograph I took." For a second he looked
disappointed. 

"Oh like that little girl with the napalm burns?" He looked interested
again. 

"Cong crucified on the wire outside a firebase. It was at night and lit
with a Willie Pete round." They saw an image in it that I didn't seem 
to fit their needs. 

The man thought for a minute, then spoke. "So you have some experiences
while you were with the ARVN to relate to us." 

I motioned to Jim. He said it about like this. "We was with the lead
element to enter a rubber plantation. You got any idea what a rubber 
plantation looks like." 

"No I've never been on one." 

"It's like a forest with no little trees. Everything is clean man. Just
rows and rows of trees with no brush. Charlie opened up and penned us 
down. Only two of the soldiers with us went down. Everybody else was 
hidin' behind trees. Me, I was wishin' mama had, had herself a smaller 
son." He saw the lost look on Robs face.  "Oh, I'm a lot of man to get 
behind a little rubber tree." Rob nodded. 

"We was penned down big time. Couldn't go forward and couldn't go back.
A hundred ARVN behind us with no advisor and about sixteen and us under 
fire. Then the mortars started to fall on the plantation. We didn't 
have no mortars, no artillery, and sure as hell no airplanes to call 
in. It looked pretty much like the end to me." 

"How the hell did you get out?" Rob's buddy, the organizer asked. 

"Those hundred ARVN troops, that everybody said wasn't worth a damn,
charged through that rubber plantation picking us up as they went by. 
We chased Charlie out of his positions, and just as far as we could. We 
got his three mortar tubes, Russian by the way. The count was five ARVN 
rangers killed in the assault. They lost five of their own to either 
save us, or to kick some Cong butt." Jim was grinning because the 
others were so stone faced. "I don't know which it was, but they sure 
was a sight to see. Running with them little knives on the end of the 
fifty year old rifles we gave them. 

"I do hope that makes it into the testimony, since it is fair to show
both sides I think." I said it knowing it wouldn't. Nobody is fair when 
it comes to war or politics. 

"Well that really isn't exactly the kind of thing we are looking for." 

"Of course it isn't," I said that as I walked out. 

"Why don't you call your friends at the news service and blow his
cover." Jim asked that grinning. 

"Jim what do you think of that war?" 

"I hate the mother. Don't make no sense at all." 

"I could never do what they are going to do, but then maybe the ends
does justify the means." 

"Yeah, but you and me know them guys are getting used by the politicians
again." 

The next time I thought about that I saw the Navy guy trying to be
president.  I got out my dad's rusty old pickup.  The one nobody had 
drove in thirty years.  I drove it to the polls and voted against the 
man who called what should have been his brothers murderers. 

Last time I saw him he was dogging GI's again.  It was modern soldiers
in a new war that time.  I looked over at the empty chair and said, 
"Well Uncle Deacon, after all he is a one trick pony." 

The End. 

The empty chair didn't answer of course.


Tweet