Didn't Expect

For Jimmy, forty years later

“I didn’t expect him to be in such good condition.” That phrase was all the sister remembered of the day.

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The orders came and the jokes began. Of course they knew how to pronounce it. They had been hearing it for weeks—Phuoc Long. But they laughed anyway, at humor that was stupid, or funny, or vulgar, or racist. Humor tinged with fear. Humor with a black heart.
“I hear you’re going to fuck long.”
“Hey man, I’m outta here, I’m on my way to fuck long.”
“Fuck long. Yeah bro’, that’s what I’m known for.” Hands slapping. Laughter.

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In another time, had they been there for another reason, they would have drawn in its beauty. Variegated green on rolling hills, sinuous marshes enveloped in mist in counter point to heat shimmered expanses of stunted bushes and scrub grass. They would have commented on the sharp shadows and the rising and falling drone of an accompaniment of insects. But the men in the squad had their orders and so did the men on the other side. They were on patrol and looking for each other.

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Still for hours. They watched the shadows change. Then a sound. Hollow, metallic. The officer’s hand. A signal. Fan out.

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The kid from Brooklyn. He crouched, listening, muscles taut, eyes on alert. Scanning. Ba Ra, the mountain, loomed without shadow, a surprise in the distance across the flatness. He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned his head. About three yards away. A small flicker. He could see it clearly. He didn’t expect it and watched, fascinated. He’d never been so close to a snake. Not in Flatbush. Diamond shaped head. Slick. Intricate pattern of browns and blacks. He stifled a laugh. Ladies shoes. A flick of its tongue. Motion. Quick. Quick.

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They couldn’t understand why he stood up. The sound itself had evil in it. First a whistle and then something deafening. The concussion knocked him into the air and back. They could see it happen. They watched. Silent. It was like a movie. Grainy. Slow motion.

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A voice cracking.
“Man, Watson! What did you do that for? What did you stand up for?”
There were no marks on him. Just trickles of blood from his nose and one ear. Dried now because they had had to wait. The sergeant wiped them away.
He looked at one of his men, his face tortured. “I didn’t expect him to stand up!” Anger loose. Despair tight.
“Man, Watson! What did you do that for…? Shit.”
They carried him back.

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The father, mother, sister and brother stood, shell-shocked in a semi-circle. The smell of candles. Of flowers. The father put his hand on the smooth wood and looked at his son through a screen of tears. He said, to no one in particular, “I didn’t expect him to be in such good condition.” That was all the sister remembered of the day.






When we entered high school back in 1970, we knew that ____ had lost her brother in Vietnam. It was not something we spoke about. We were thirteen and fourteen and war and death though in our living rooms and on the news each night were still too abstract, too distant, and just too much for a group of just-turned teenagers in a Catholic school for girls. Despite the fact that we wore MIA bracelets and talked about the immorality of war, the death of a brother was something that was too big for us, and so we didn't speak of it.
A few years ago, that group of just-teenagers, now grown women with our own kids--teenagers and young adults--gathered and talked and laughed, and gossiped. Once again a war raged. This time, we had the words for the undertow that we all felt. And ____ told the story of the loss of her brother. This time we could listen and we could hear. And so forty years later, this is for Jimmy.

Pat Buchanan: The View from the 1850s

Last night I watched the Rachel Maddow Show twice because I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing in her brief debate with Pat Buchanan. The second time, I asked my husband to join me to serve as both a witness and a reality check. It has been quite a while since I’ve heard such well articulated ignorance. Standing out most for me in Buchanan’s jeremiad was his assertion of special status for white men.
Buchanan’s most stunning quote was in response to Maddow’s question of why in his belief 108 of the 110 Justices to serve on the United States Supreme Court were white men. He stated (without flinching or twitching) "White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks, who were 90% of the nation in 1960 when I was growing up and the other 10% were African-Americans who had been discriminated against. That's why.”
Wow. So his assertion is that white men have a right to lay exclusive claim to this nation and to the structures that support it. Yes, stunning in 2009, but surprising? Maybe not. Not two full years after the ratification of the Constitution, Congress passed into law the Naturalization Law of 1790 the provisions of which are as follows:
that any alien, being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof, on application to any common law court of record, in any one of the States wherein he shall have resided for the term of one year at least, and making proof to the satisfaction of such court, that he is a person of good character, and taking the oath or affirmation prescribed by law, to support the Constitution of the United States....
And so, early on whiteness and maleness were to be privileged. The fruits of citizenship were to be limited to white men. White men were to be given special consideration, to be afforded preferential treatment, to be regarded affirmatively. This was to be a nation of and for white people. Others were to be “other.” Apparently, however, Buchanan’s thinking as he stated it last evening has not evolved along with the thinking of the nation as that privilege began to be dissolved with the passage of the immediate post-Civil war Constitutional amendments and in the groundbreaking civil rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s. The work to align our espoused ideals as stated in the Constitution and Declaration of Independence with our expressed ideals continues. Apparently Pat Buchanan has missed that evolution. Maddow countered Buchanan with the statement “You’re living in the 1950s.” I think not. He is living in the 1850s. Perhaps even earlier.