Dusty
written by: Darryl B
I guess there’s a million reasons why I’m sitting on the porch of this cabin with a bottle in my lap. I took enough friggin pain pills to kill a horse, and things are beginning to get hazy around the edges.
I better get this out while I still can.
***
I was 16 when the Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, that was right after Kennedy got shot, and the whole damn country was crying. I remember I was down the street at Kenny Statler’s house because we were trying to start a band, and we wanted to be like them, plus I liked his sister Dusty, that was her nickname, she was 15. Their parents weren’t home, and we knew they kept their booze behind the records in the Hi-Fi, how stupid did they think we were? We got so drunk Dusty was puking before the Beatles even came on, and I don’t even remember them playing. I just remember trying to talk to her through the bathroom door.
The rest of that year we practiced and practiced in the Statler’s garage with me and Kenny and two other guys, their names don’t matter, I can’t even remember, all I know is that we were never gonna be as good as the Beatles, they had some sort of friggin magic, every song they played got into your head and never left.
But it didn’t matter, none of it mattered because two months after I graduated, I got my draft papers, my effin draft papers and this was 1966 and that BS about burning your draft cards hadn’t happened yet, when you got drafted, you said your goodbyes and your ass was on that bus to basic training and forget all that rock ‘n roll shit, we’re gonna make you a soldier and ship you off to kill commies in some effin swamp on the other side of the world.
It’s getting hard to focus now, so I’m just gonna skip the whole part about basic training and get to the important parts.
I was assigned to an infantry platoon. They say if you’d rather ride than walk, join the Navy. I wished I had taken that advice, because walk we did: in the day, at midnight, at 4:00 am, always the same thing, look for Charlie, watch for ambushes, watch where you step if you don’t want a shit-encrusted punji stick going through your calf, or a bouncing betty taking off your nads and probably killing you.
Day after day, the same thing… walking in line, separated, in a jungle that went from cloudless and muggy, to cloudy and muggy, to pouring rain. And it wasn’t just Charlie and booby traps to watch out for: Venomous snakes and insects were everywhere. Leeches. One of the guys in another squad got bitten, and by the time the chopper arrived, he was dead.
The only thing that kept me going were letters from Dusty. After that night of the Beatles, we started going out. She was a cool chick, I really dug her, and it was mutual. We went out driving, just us, with the radio playing, and her snuggled up to me on the front bench seat.
“Don’t Worry, Baby,” by The Beach Boys, was our song. One night when we were making love on the hood of the car overlooking a reservoir, way up in the Catskills, she held my face in her hands and told me she loved me. Wow. No chick had ever told me that, and at the special moment when were both looking up into the night sky and crying out together, I kissed her like I was a drowning man and told her I loved her, too. We were together from February 1964 to December 1966.
I hated leaving her. She promised she’d wait for me and write. We had plans.
After six months of Vietnam, I’d had enough. My first R&R stateside, I took off my uniform and split. I took a bus from Camp Benning to upstate NY and walked three miles to my house to get my Nova, I was gonna surprise her.
Some guy answered the door. He had long hair and wore beads. “Who is it, baby?” It was Dusty. She appeared in the doorway next to the hippy. She was big as a house; maybe eight, probably nine months. “Denny!” she said uncertainly. The hippy slipped a possessive arm around her waist. “You know this douche?” he asked.
In about 15 seconds, I had him on his face in the front yard, with one arm wrenched behind his back. I pulled. “WHADDJA call me? Douche? I’ll kill you! Fuckin’ hippy piece of shit!” I pushed his face deeper into the dirt.
The hippy sobbed, said he was sorry, Dusty was pulling on my shirt, and begging me to not hurt him. I finally got up, not before giving him a final boot in the ass that sent him sprawling.
“Oh, Denny,” she cried. “We gotta talk.”
***
Turns out she had met the hippy–“Gerry”–about the time I left for basic. He was a friend of Kenny’s, and at first, they were just friends, he’d come over to visit Kenny, and Dusty was there.
But soon he has coming over to see her instead of Kenny, and next thing they were going out, and it was summer, 1967, and she, Gerry, and kids from all over were going to San Francisco for the Summer of Love. She still wrote me, still thought her thing with “Gerry” was a fling, that it was still her and me, so no use mentioning it and getting me worried.
But after her two weeks in Hippyville, USA, I was just a tool of the establishment, a damn baby killer, and Gerry had done a lot of fast talking.
“So that’s it, then,” I said tonelessly. “Just like that, we’re done, and you’re with that turd?”
“No, Denny!” she screamed as I spun gravel and careened off into the night, the engine blatting. “That’s what I gotta tell you! It’s yours! IT’S YOURS!!” My last sight of her was on her knees, face in her hands on her front lawn, sobbing.
***
Like countless others, I fled to Canada, where I got work as a dishwasher and lived in a crummy rooming house, saving every dime I could.
My friend had a cabin and told me if I ever wanted to stay there, I was welcome. That day, I quit my job and headed north.
It was on the Canadian side of Lake Huron, up in the sticks, friggin MILES from everybody and everything. The silence was deep, the deepest I’d ever known.
And during next weeks, as all the levels of distraction were pulled away, nobody else to talk to, nothing to read or watch, it gave me a raw look at who I was. Especially on clear, cold nights. Under the black Ontario skies, the leafless trees and the waving curtains of the northern lights, I was forced to look at myself in a way I hadn’t ever before. And I didn’t like who I saw. I was 25, no college, no girlfriend, nightmares about Nam, working as a dishwasher, now unemployed.
I decided, screw it, screw the world, I wanted the solitude of the wilderness, and bought the cabin from my friend.
I read. I read Thoreau, Leopold, Muir. Their writings were heavy, made me think, but I finally got what they were saying, and it was just how I felt.
***
A year went by. Then two. I supported myself by writing magazine articles with a used typewriter I bought, I had plenty of time to sit and think up stuff, especially for military-type magazines.
I started having dreams; one dream in particular. The same dream, over and over. It was a woman, holding the hand of a kid. I could never see who it was, but it looked like it was Fall because the leaves were all changing. They were always walking away, and I couldn’t see their faces.
A publisher noticed my writing and contacted me. Would I be interested in writing a book about my days in Nam? I thought about it, took a week, walked in the woods, remembering, thinking. Yeah, what the hell.
I poured myself into that friggin thing. It was cathartic, but it also dug up horrible memories. Villages, thatched huts on fire, the heat on my face, people screaming and shooting at me, and me shooting back, my friends being hit, the whup whup whup of the Huey medevacs. The screaming of fast movers and the dull thud of their bombs and napalm; fiery orange streaks on the green jungle that quickly turned black, incinerating everything, heavy oily smoke. I held nothing back.
My book was a runaway best seller, it was in book stores, airports, malls, it had my picture on the back; I thought it was a bad picture, I looked stupid. It mentioned my cabin.
But instead of being happy, I grew more sad, it was now almost four years since that night with the hippy dipshit and Dusty and peeling away in the Nova, wiping tears away angrily. What was my life? No band. No friends. No Dusty. Just living out in the middle of nowhere with the bare treetops clattering against each other in the frigid December wind. I had no “directions to advance confidently towards,” as Thoreau advised, no “dreams,” no “uncommon hours.” I had nothing.
***
Now we’re back to the beginning, and the bottle’s almost gone. I’m almost gone.
On New Year’s Day, I couldn’t take it anymore. I made my bed like I’d been taught in basic; I bounced a quarter on it for the hell of it. I straightened up my few things, took a bunch of pain pills I had left over from something, and grabbed a bottle of Jack. I took a final look at my book, stepped out on the porch, and shut the door.
As sat in the rocker, hitting the Jack, I was wondering how it could have gone differently. If there had been no effin war. If our band had taken off. Maybe college, a real career. And especially Dusty, who told me she loved me one night I’d never forget. Dusty at 15. Dusty telling me she’d wait for me. Dusty yelling something as I peeled out that night; I never did understand what she screamed as I was leaving.
Things were turning white around the edges, and there was a high-pitched whine in my ears. I was getting really relaxed, tired, and could barely keep my eyes open. I dropped the bottle and heard the crash and tinkling of glass.
Just before things went black, I heard the crunch of tires on my long gravel driveway. A car pulled up and stopped.
Someone got out.
Dusty.
***
I faded in and out; I heard beeping and hissing and low voices. “Turning the corner,” I think I heard. I fell out of time.
I had the dream about the woman and the boy again. But this time, something was different. They somehow sensed I was behind them and slowed for me to get closer.
They turned. It was Dusty, and she was holding the hand of a little boy.
A little boy who looked just like me.
He smiled and held out his hand.
Home. Thank God, home.
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