Born on the Fourth of July Read online

  there was a soldier

  tapdancing softly in the rain

  above the coffin

  six feet above, the people praying

  They had to carry him out of Arthur’s Bar one night. The people were still dancing and the band was blasting really loud and he was screaming. There was a girl. He wanted to dance with her and squeeze her, kiss her soft face and take her home. Here, don’t worry about the chair, we can leave it here, we can go to your apartment and I can take your clothes off. I can lie with you and stroke your long slim body. I can kiss you and make love to you. We can make babies and I can tell you about the war. We can make lots of babies.

  He was very drunk, drunker than he had ever been. The whole place was spinning and it became very hard to hear anything but a great rushing sound that roared in his ears like a terrific storm. “You got to get out of here,” they were telling him. “You got to get in the car and go home.” They slowly lifted the body into the small car. He was laughing now, laughing and singing Irish songs. “Hurry up now,” he could hear them saying. “Hurry up now and we’ll get you back home.” They all seemed to look like funny cartoon characters moving the numb limbs of his lower part into the front seat of the car. “That’s right, that’s good now,” they were saying. Some girl was laughing in the back seat and the driver told her to shut up. “Are you okay, is everything all right?” said his friend.

  “He’s really drunk, really smashed,” said the girl. “We got to get him home right away.”

  “How are his legs? Are his legs okay?”

  The rubber urine bag. He moved his hand slowly down his leg to the rubber urine bag. It was as hard as a rock and his pants were soaked and it was all slowly soaking into the seat.

  “He’s pissed all over the fucking seat,” said the girl. “What should we do?”

  “Get him home. Drop him off.”

  They got him to the house and lifted him out into his chair and there was the front seat of the car all soaked. It was very late and the young girl almost seemed in a panic. The two boys pushed him up the wooden ramp his father had built with his own hands. He had put it all together just before he came home from the hospital. His old man had worked long and hard on the ramp to make it just right for his son who had just come home from the war. It was a piece of art, just like the special room with the shower. Every piece had been cut to fit and there were two long smooth handrails. The whole thing was painted red like the house. The old man had worked hard on the ramp, like he had worked hard in the food store for twenty-five years, like he worked hard at everything he ever did in his life.

  His mother screamed when he came in. She was still screaming hysterically when the old man bent down and lifted him up onto the little bed. He laid the body gently down and began to hook up the plastic tube. Then he took the piss-soaked pants off and undid the rocklike rubber piss bag from his boy’s leg.

  “I’m fucked up, I’m fucked up,” the boy was saying.

  His mother went racing in and out of the room. “He’s drunk, he’s drunk,” she repeated to the old man. “We’ve got a drunk for a son.”

  The old man didn’t seem to hear her. He grabbed a warm washcloth and began scrubbing his son. The last thing he did was to connect the rubber tube that went into the boy’s penis to the long plastic tube that went into the bag on the side of the bed. That was what the nurses in the hospital had taught them to do. It was very important to connect the rubber tube in the boy’s penis to the plastic tube when he went to bed at night. So that everything would run okay. So that everything would be all right. So he did it just the way they had told them and after pulling the sheets and covers up over the body and just below the shoulders of his son, the old man walked out of the room.

  The lights went out in the house. The boy turned slowly over until he had propped himself up on both elbows with his head pushed down into his pillow. He wanted to forget the terrible night. He wanted to forget it and everything else, the numb legs, the unfeeling numbness. He was lost, more lost than he had ever been in his life. Lost in some kind of limbo land of the dead. He wanted to explode, to get out of this crazy numb body and be a man again. He wanted to be free again, to walk in his back yard on the grass. He wanted to run down to Sparky’s and get a haircut, he wanted to play stickball with Richie, to swing the bat, to feel the gravel on Hamilton Avenue beneath his feet again. He wanted to stand up in the shower every morning with the hot water streaming down his back and off his legs.

  It was now very clear that this thing was final like death.

  No one, he thought, ever wanted to think about final things, dead things, things that ended abruptly or could not be explained. Once someone died, he thought, people just put them in the ground, they put them in the ground and stood above the grave saying words that helped explain why there was an end to the person, words that were beautiful like the flowers and the big stone, words that helped others realize that it wasn’t the end, but only the beginning of a wonderful thing. It was so easy for them to say the words, to deny the finality. Why weren’t they saying the words over his bed? Why weren’t they telling him that this whole thing, this whole crazy numb thing, wasn’t final? But for him there were no words and no people, nothing to tell him things would be beautiful again. This end was no beginning. It was starting to become very clear that there would be no change in his condition, no reconciliation with the half of his body that seemed so utterly lost forever. He was in the rain, trapped, and there was no one. It was ugly and cold and final.

  HE WATCHED the island disappear as the plane took off from Kennedy Airport. For the first time since he had come home from the war, he was getting away, going off somewhere by himself. His chair was safely packed in the belly of the plane, and he was just one of the other passengers, sitting there just like everybody else. Sometimes when he was out in his car, driving around, cruising up and down the block and into the town with his hand controls, he would get the same kind of feeling. It was a really free feeling that he couldn’t get unless he was out of the chair.

  He had been thinking about going to Mexico for a long time. In the hospital there had been a brochure that said there was this place down there where people like himself were cared for. It was a place called the Village of the Sun. He’d even met one guy who’d been there and talked about a whorehouse he’d gone to where the whores were very understanding, where even paralyzed men could get fucked. He thought about the Village of the Sun all the time after that. He just knew inside he could make love again, even though all the parts had been destroyed by the war.

  It was night by the time he arrived in Guadalajara. A man named Rahilio met him at the airport and put him in his Ford pickup. It had been a long trip and now it was going to be a long ride to Las Fuentes and the Village, but he was happy to be in Mexico. Rahilio’s small son lay on the seat next to him singing a song he couldn’t understand. He opened up his window and looked out into the dark Mexican countryside.

  The long dining hall full of wheelchairs was an exciting place for him the next morning. There were a lot of people talking and laughing and the sun was very bright on the white walls and the colorful tile tables. There were old and young, veterans from all the wars. Aides ran back and forth helping the men who couldn’t use their hands to eat. It made him feel good to be with so many others who were like himself. He felt accepted here. He thought he might be able to feel human again.

  It was the Fourth of July and that night after dinner Rahilio’s wife came up to him with a big cake and everybody began to sing “Happy Birthday.” Somehow they had found out it was his birthday.

  He could see you could have a nice life here if you wanted to. Some of the veterans he met were planning to stay at the Village of the Sun until they died. He could see there were a lot of reasons not to go back to the States again. A lot of the men would play cards all day long and some would drink heavily and have to be carried back into their rooms. They got pretty loud during the card games with their women
hanging over their shoulders, big-busted Mexican women. It was something you would never see back home. Some of the others just stayed in their little rooms writing letters to people or reading the newspaper.

  It was a week before he got really restless, before he got tired of sitting around the Village. It was a Sunday and he asked Rahilio if he could go to church with him and his children. It was very quiet in the little Spanish chapel, the men sitting on one side and the women on the other. He listened to the small birds that flew above the altar during the Mass, chirping and singing. After church he told Rahilio he wanted to go into the city.

  He was lonely and he wanted to move around.… He had come almost three thousand miles and now, finally, he was riding in a cab and maybe in one of the houses in the city he was going to find a woman like the women they had told him about, a woman who would love him and make his broken body come alive again, who would lie down next to the disfigurement and love it like there was not anything the matter with him at all. He cried inside for a woman, any woman, to lie close to him. In the hospital there were so many times when he had looked at the nurses and all the visitors and it would seem so crazy that the same government that provided a big check for the wounded men couldn’t provide someone warm, someone who cared for him.

  The cabdriver left him off at the Hilton Hotel. For a long time after that he had lunch there every day. After lunch he would wheel all over the city, taking cabs and pushing the chair as far as he could until his arms began to ache. There would always be people to help him up and down the big Mexican curbs. There were beautiful cathedrals and statues everywhere he looked, and the sky was clear most of the time.

  Finally one afternoon he went up to the guy who worked behind the desk at the Hilton and asked him where the biggest whorehouse in town was. The guy behind the desk wrote down the address for him and he wheeled out to the street and caught a cab.

  The girl was very beautiful and the jukebox was playing as she pushed his chair into the small room. There was an old mattress on the floor and he got himself onto it and began to take his shirt off, watching the girl as she took off all her clothing. She lay down in the bed next to him and asked him why he wasn’t taking off his pants.

  “I can’t.” He hesitated. It was very hard for him to talk about. “I can’t take them off,” he said. He pointed to his legs. “They were paralyzed in the war.”

  She looked at him and seemed very confused.

  “The war,” he said. “Vietnam. Have you ever heard of Vietnam?”

  “Vietnam, yes.”

  “I can’t move it,” he said, showing her his penis. “You see this?” he said, pointing at the yellow catheter tube. “It doesn’t move anymore and I have to use this tube. You see this tube,” he said, pointing to it again. “It’s okay,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, senorita is muy bonita,” he said, staring at her dark eyes. “We can still love,” he said.

  The tears began to roll down her face. She was sitting in the bed next to him crying.

  “You see?” he said, pointing to the scar on his chest. “This is where they stuck a chest tube.…”

  She was getting up now and putting her clothes back on. She was still crying. She was so very beautiful and he wanted so much to lie with her body warm and soft against the top of him, where he could still feel. But now she was walking out the door, leaving for good. She didn’t even ask for his money, she didn’t even want that.

  He lay there for a long time until the madam came in and said it was time for him to leave. It was getting very late, she said. He put on his shirt and dragged his body across the bed, back into the wheelchair. The madam helped him out into the street.

  It was early in the morning and the sun was about to come up and he sat crying outside the whorehouse. A cab came by. The driver stopped and asked him if he needed anything. “Do you need a woman?” he said. “Hey, want to go to a great whorehouse? There’s a woman in there that will knock you out, really knows how to fuck.”

  There wasn’t anything left to lose, he thought.

  The driver got out of his cab and pushed him down the street to a place that was still open. “Wait a minute out here. I’ll be right back,” he told him. He came back with a big smile on his face. “Maria will be right out,” he said, and pushed him into the bar.

  A very young girl came into the room, walking past all the tables and then up to his. She had long brown hair down to her waist. “Do you want to sleep with me?” she said. He looked at her and said, “Yes.” She seemed very excited, her brown eyes as bright as a little child’s. He thanked the cabdriver and gave him some money and followed the girl into one of the tiny cubicles.

  She was so much more relaxed than the other woman. He didn’t have to explain anything to her. She lay down and touched his face gently. She kissed him and pushed her breasts next to his chest. She felt warm and good. She didn’t seem to notice his pants were still on, or the catheter, the rubber urine bag, or any of that. She loved him, they loved each other on the bed in the little room, for what seemed a very long time. She didn’t care about the war or any of the other things. They laughed and rolled on top of each other, hiding under the blankets, and talked about a lot of things. She told him she had a kid, a little girl, and they lived in the city. It was very lonely she told him and she really didn’t want to do what she was doing, but it was the only way she could make money for herself and her baby. He held her in his arms as if she were his sister as well as his lover.

  There was a loud knock on the door and the cabdriver yelled in a taunting voice that it was time for him to get out. But she laughed and said something in Spanish and they stayed in bed almost an extra ten minutes over the limit. When she was getting dressed she asked him if he wanted to get married. She told him she loved him very much and wrote down her address on a small piece of paper. “Here. You take this,” she said. She helped him put on his shirt and buttoned each one of the buttons for him. “Come see me tomorrow at four,” she said. “You can live with me. Dinero,” she said, and he gave her fifteen dollars and she helped him into the chair.

  All the way back to the village he thought about her and how they would live together and learn each other’s language. He saw them sitting naked in bed together studying their books, the child playing at their feet. But then he began to think she hadn’t really meant it and he didn’t go back the next day at four. He went to a different place and lay with a different girl.

  He went out almost every night after that, coming in every morning just after the sun came up and sleeping until four in the afternoon. Then he would get up and get ready to go into the city. Rahilio would call a cab for him and he would wait for it outside the gate of the Village of the Sun.

  He would go from whorehouse to whorehouse, wheeling the chair in past the pretty painted Mexican women. He would find a table and wait for one to come up and talk to him. Usually they were kind and did not pity him. They would smile back, very interested, very curious, and he would smell their perfume and look at their breasts. He would sleep with a different one every night. He wanted to sleep with as many as he could, trying one after the other.

  One night another Vietnam veteran from the Village came in with him, a guy named Charlie. Charlie had some good weed and said he wanted to have a real party. They got very stoned and very drunk together, and in the last whorehouse they went to Charlie got into a wild fight with one of the whores. He punched her in the face because she laughed at him when he pulled down his pants and told her he couldn’t feel his penis or move it anymore. He was crazy drunk and he kept yelling and screaming, swinging his arms and his fists at the crowd who had gathered around him. “That goddamn fucking slut! I’m gonna kill that whore for ever laughing at me. That bitch thinks it’s funny I can’t move my dick. Fuck you! Fuck all of you goddamn motherfuckers! They made me kill babies! They made me kill babies!” Charlie screamed again and again.

  The owner was shaking his fist, telling them both to get out and never come ba
ck, and he knew someone was going to kill them if they didn’t leave right away. But he just sat there in the middle of the bar, unable to move. What Charlie was saying was what he had been feeling for a long time.

  Finally the owner got a couple of guys and threw them out into the street. They managed to get a cab, but halfway home Charlie got into another fight with the driver over the money he was charging, and they both had to get out in the middle of the highway.

  They sat by the edge of the road for a long time until a Mexican truckdriver picked them up. He just picked them up as if there was nothing at all unusual about finding the two of them out there. He lifted them out of their chairs and put them into the cab of his truck. Charlie was singing by the time they got to the Village and had pissed all over the seat; the driver opened his window but never complained.

  Somehow that was the end of it for him. The whole thing was over. He had a real cold feeling about it now. He didn’t go back to the city the next night. He spent one more day in the Village, then told Rahilio he’d had enough. He caught the next plane back to New York.

  IT IS THE END of the summer when I get back. The days are long and hot and there is still so much restlessness in me. I sit in my parents’ living room and try to watch the baseball game on television. I keep going down to Arthur’s Bar. I begin to think about getting an apartment. I have never lived alone, but I decide to try it now.

  I get a place in Hempstead near the university. The rent is two hundred dollars, but I never think much about money anymore. I just spend the big checks I get from the government. I go all over Hempstead buying out the furniture stores. I buy an electric typewriter, a huge expensive stereo, a bunch of paintings. I don’t care what things cost.