A Long Way Back Read online

  “I’m no psychologist, Anthony, but you were almost hung in Arkansas, you were shot at two different times, courtesy of the Klan, and you’ve seen death and dying beginning at age thirteen when you watched a boy get lynched. I would guess all that could have an, uh, cumulative effect.”

  “I’ve been handling it up to now, though, Chucky.”

  “Maybe you’ve been suppressing it up to now, Anthony. From what little I’ve read, it doesn’t go away altogether.”

  Anthony sat back. “Maybe you’re right, but I’ve always been able to maintain. I’m scared it’s taking over now, though.”

  “If you’re saying you think you’re crazy, I’m not sure deranged people stop to analyze themselves, Anthony. They go wild and keep stepping. You need to talk to someone besides me, though. I’m just a math professor down here. I think what you’re going through might be temporary, but if not…”

  “Man, I wish you were here,” Anthony said.

  “Don’t you have any friends in D.C.?”

  “I know people, but they’re not friends.”

  “What about your second family in Cleveland? Cread Williams is a veteran. And Raymond…have you talked to them? Have you spoken to any of the Williamses since you moved from there?”

  “No. I’m a little embarrassed. It’s been so long.”

  “If they knew what you’ve been through, I’m sure they’d understand.”

  “You’re right, Chucky. I should.”

  “Yes, you should, because you will not make many friends beating up on people.”

  After Anthony hung up, a knock on the front door snapped his attention back to the moment. Could it be Carla? She hadn’t returned his calls, but maybe she had come back. But, no, she’d walk right in.

  It was the mail carrier with a package similar to the one he had delivered a few days earlier. Anthony studied it. Same kind of stamps, same writing, same size envelope, he thought as he laid it on the kitchen table.

  Anthony opened it to see the same papers he had received before. He looked downward, in thought, then retrieved the other set. Anthony sat and stared at the two stacks of papers, absentmindedly riffling one stack, then the other. The first three pages began and ended with the same names.

  The phone rang, and Anthony almost tripped getting to it.

  “Mr. Andrews?”

  “Yes?”

  “Congratulations, you’ve just won—”

  Anthony hung up before the caller finished.

  He looked at the two stacks again before tossing the second one in the kitchen trash can. They apparently sent it twice to make sure he got at least one of them. Anthony sat rubbing his forehead then put the remaining stack aside. But who was sending them—and for what purpose?

  The “vacation” allowed Anthony to finish painting the garage and tool shed. Carla would be happy. The thought of her still caused a twinge in his gut. He missed her more now than at any other time in his life. He needed her more than any other time in his life. And he sorely missed his daughter. Jesus, what’s going on with me? Anthony thought as he went back to the kitchen and picked up the phone to call Carla for the second time that day. He stood holding the phone to his ear, waiting. Finally, his father-in-law answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Monroe?”

  “Yes. Anthony?”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m good, Anthony, and you?”

  “Um, okay, sir. Is Carla around?”

  “Anthony, let me give you a bit of advice.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve known Carla long enough to know she’s going to operate on her own terms with this issue.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So there’s no need calling twice a day hoping she will respond. What you need to do, son, is to be ready when she makes up her mind she wants to see you again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That means getting yourself together, son. It’s hard to influence anything on the outside until you repair what’s wrong on the inside. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. You’re a smart young man. I like you. Norma likes you. Whatever happened between you two can be fixed. However, you’ve got to do the fixing on your end first.”

  “Okay. I’m working on it, Mr. Monroe, believe me. Could you do me a favor?”

  “What’s that, son?”

  “Tell her I love her?”

  “She knows, Anthony, but I’ll tell her.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Anthony said before placing the phone in the cradle and slumping into a chair at the kitchen table. At least he knew where Carla got her wisdom.

  After he’d washed the paintbrushes and discarded the cans, Anthony returned to the house, showered, put Miles Davis’s album Workin’ With The Miles Davis Quintet on the turntable, made a cup of coffee, and sat at the typewriter, downhearted. He toyed with a pencil before throwing it across the room. How could he even begin to tell the story of The Seven and the other missing soldiers if he had no names, no history, and only an unconfirmed motive for their circumstance?

  Miles’s song “It Never Entered My Mind” played as Anthony sat, thinking. He played it repeatedly because soothing music was what he needed right then.

  Countless calls and letters to the soldiers he’d interviewed came up blank. They seemed afraid of something—even after leaving Vietnam, even after leaving the Army. Means, the weight-lifting militant at Cu Chi, had been shipped to another stockade as far as Anthony could determine, and Ernie Daniels, his friend, was nowhere to be found.

  It was his fault not getting the names of the seven soldiers. That should have been a priority. Anthony frowned as he tapped a pencil on the desktop. But how could he have known there’d be a clampdown?

  He slid a blank sheet of paper across the desk. To hell with it, he thought as he got up to get a glass of grape juice—he’d write the story without the names. At the refrigerator, Anthony glanced at the stack of papers on the kitchen table again. The men’s names were probably there, but how would he know one from another?

  Back at the typewriter, Anthony typed: There was something eerie about the seven bedraggled soldiers who returned from War Zone C. It was odd they were all black, and it was even stranger no one would talk about their mission. According to unsubstantiated… Anthony stopped. How could he publish an unsubstantiated story?

  The jarring ring of the telephone made him spill juice on the counter.

  “H-hello.”

  “Anthony. How are you?” Bill Walden asked.

  Anthony winced. They’d fired him. “Bill? Fine.”

  “You getting a well-deserved rest?”

  “Uh. Yeah, Bill.”

  “Good. Well, I wanted to be the first to congratulate you.”

  Anthony paused. “On?”

  “You, my friend, have been nominated for the Worth Bingham Prize in the international reporting category.”

  “Worth Bingham? Are you kidding?”

  “No. Those were great articles, Anthony, obviously written from the heart. Enjoy the rest of your vacation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Buoyed by Walden’s call, Anthony sat at the kitchen table and began typing again. After finishing a few pages, a thought penetrated his concentration. There were pictures. He had taken photos of The Seven when they exited the helicopter. He tapped his head with one finger. Where were they?

  Chapter 16

  E

  very day, Anthony fought the need to drink. Some days he was more successful than others. He was at his weakest when the dreams were the most vivid. And every day he scoured the paper, drawn to any news on Vietnam. He read voraciously from any news source he could access, even while battling the anxiety caused by the memories.

  A week before Anthony was to return to work, he came across an article titled “Lost Soldier,” by Jeremiah Remming, in a Muhammad Speaks magazine. The author wrote of a PFC Soledad, a former veteran, who had written to t
he paper concerning Private Jeremiah Frankford, a friend stationed with the 25th who was sent on patrol and never returned. The story described Soledad’s search for his friend, who had mysteriously disappeared. Anthony tore the article from the magazine and placed it in his burgeoning file of Vietnam articles and other written material he had collected.

  The next morning after breakfast, he pulled the story out again. Soledad had run into the same problems as Anthony. He called Remming to leave his name and number for Soledad to call. The telephone rang two hours later.

  “Mr. Andrews?” an operator inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a collect call from a Mr. Soledad in Oakland, California. Will you accept the charge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Andrews?”

  “Mr. Soledad, thanks for calling.”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Oh yeah. I heard of you from other friends at the 25th.”

  “When were you there?”

  “August 30, 1968, to July 1, 1969.”

  Anthony’s grip on the phone tightened, but he didn’t want to get excited only to be disappointed again.

  “I was with the 2nd Battalion, 27th Infantry.”

  “So. How are you doing, Mr. Soledad?”

  “Please. Call me Furman.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, so.”

  Anthony took a deep breath. “Yeah. I understand.” He paused to gather himself. “Look, I wanted to talk to you regarding the article about you in Muhammad Speaks. Any further luck finding Frankford?”

  “Naw, man. I thought he might have been discharged early and left, but his parents haven’t heard from him either.” Soledad took a deep breath. “That’s bullshit, man. How does a soldier just disappear like that?”

  “Maybe he was MIA.”

  “Nope. At least the Army stated he wasn’t missing.”

  “When did he last go on patrol?”

  “He shouldn’t have been on patrol. He was a clerk.”

  “When was the last time anybody saw him?”

  “June 17. He was with other headquarter guys being herded somewhere nobody knows about.”

  Anthony’s heart skipped a beat. “Look. Can I call you back? I want to check something. I’m looking for some soldiers, too.”

  “Sure.” He rattled off his phone number. “I’m living at this shelter, so if you don’t get me the first time, call back, okay?”

  “You bet.” Anthony paused. “Oh. Wait.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did Frankford have a middle name?”

  “Yeah. Kendrick.”

  “And where was he from?”

  “Akron, Ohio.”

  Anthony smiled at the mention of a city near his former home. “Okay. Thanks.” Anthony placed the phone in the cradle, pulled the roster from a box and looked up Jeremiah Kendrick Frankford.

  Anthony sighed after he had gone through the Fs and then the Ks and the Js looking for any name that resembled the private’s name—another dead end.

  He sat back, staring at the wall. How could a soldier be missing like that? He flipped through the rest of the roster to the last page and a date. It read August 5, 1969. Frankford should have been there. Anthony sat a while longer. Why would he think he’d have any more luck than Frankford’s best friend?

  The whir of the garbage truck’s tailgate down the street interrupted his thoughts. Anthony emptied the contents of the kitchen trash into the garbage can in the garage and dragged it to the street.

  His neighbor, Mrs. Solomon, was waiting when he returned.

  “Hi, Anthony.”

  “Hi, Mrs. Solomon. How are you today?” Anthony mentally kicked himself. She was the most talkative person he’d ever met. Carla usually drew the brunt of Mrs. Solomon’s unending conversations. But asking her how she was doing guaranteed a discussion that could take them into the next week.

  “Well, I’m glad you asked…”

  Anthony made a point of looking at his watch. Minutes, hours, weeks, then dates flashed through Anthony’s mind. He raised a finger as Mrs. Solomon droned on. “Could you wait a minute, ma’am?” The garbagemen had pulled in front of Anthony’s house. He dashed to the front lawn to drag one of his cans back into the garage as a confounded Mrs. Solomon and the garbage crew watched.

  Anthony searched through the trash to retrieve the second copy of the roster, laying it on the ground, wiping tomato paste and congealed egg whites off it, and flipping it open to the last page where it showed a date of June 1, 1969. He picked up the sheets of papers before remembering Mrs. Solomon, but she had turned to walk back to her house, muttering.

  As he rushed into the house, the telephone rang. Anthony ignored it as he flipped through pages until he got to the Fs in the second roster. Frankford! Jeremiah Kendrick!

  Bingo! He thought as he wrote Frankford’s name, rank, unit, serial number, and city on a piece of paper. He was doubly elated to hear a familiar voice on the answering device provided by the Washington Post.

  “This is Terrence Means. If this is Anthony Andrews the reporter, give me a call at 718—”

  Anthony snatched at the phone, but it fell. He grabbed it from the floor. “Hello? Hello?”

  Chapter 17

  A

  nthony called the number Means had left on the tape, but it was busy. He called three more times in succession with the same results. It was 10:00 p.m. and he was exhausted. He’d call the next day.

  In the middle of another tortured night, this time with mortar shells falling around him like hailstones, it came to him as he awoke, out of breath and sweating as if he’d run a marathon. Anthony leaped from the bed and pulled the two rosters together, going over each page name by name. It was dawn when he finished, but the thrill of yesterday turned into unbridled exhilaration.

  There were two rosters because the names of the fifteen men who were sent on patrol were on the June 1 roster but not on the August 5 roster. They had been removed.

  He pulled out the pictures he had taken and laid them next to the list of fifteen names. If only he could place the names with the faces.

  The clock read 6:15. It was too early to call Means, but it’d be the first thing he did. Then he’d devise a way to track these men with the information he had.

  “Got out two months ago,” Means said to Anthony, “with an OTH.”

  “OTH?”

  “Other-Than-Honorable Discharge.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means when I look for a job and they look at my service record, they’ll see I was a troublemaker,” Means chuckled. “The adjutant says, though, that if I keep my nose clean for a few years, it could be upgraded to a general discharge.”

  “They can do that?”

  Means snorted. “Well, if they can’t, then it wouldn’t be the first time they lied, but I’m betting they can. They can do anything they want.”

  “And what do they mean by ‘nose clean’?”

  “I imagine they were telling that to everybody who they thought knew what was going on with the fifteen men. I guess they figured one way to keep things under wraps was to give out OTHs, or the threat of an OTH, and wait. And if one of the soldiers squealed, what’s the word of an OTH’er worth?”

  “So that’s why nobody talked to me even after they were discharged,” Anthony mused aloud.

  “It’s one reason.”

  “So how much do you know, Means? Or maybe I should ask how much are you willing to share?”

  “I’ll tell you all I know, man. Fuck the Army. If I had been on base, I would have been on patrol with those brothers, and I’d have been in the middle of that shit.”

  “What about your friend Ernie Daniels?”

  “Haven’t heard from him.”

  “I want to meet with you. Have you been in contact with anyone else since you’ve been out?”

  “Naw, man. I’ve been scrambling, trying to work a few odd jobs to keep a roof
over my head. Put the past behind me.”

  “I’ve got names.”

  “All of them?” Means asked.

  “I’m fairly sure.”

  “How?”

  “I got rosters from before and after their mission. I thought you or Daniels might have had something to do with it.”

  “Naw. I was in the joint, and I doubt Daniels would’ve had access. It’s doubtful he knew anybody who did. I suspect he’s an OTH’er himself.”

  “Yeah, probably. But look. How can we get together? I want to go over these names and anything else you weren’t able to tell me in Cu Chi.”

  “I ain’t got no travelin’ money, so I guess you got to come to me.”

  “No problem. Let’s pick a date—the sooner the better.”

  That night, sitting at the kitchen table, Anthony heard a scratching sound in the kitchen. He looked next to the refrigerator to see his little friend wasn’t as smart as he was bold. He couldn’t be too harsh on the little fellow, though. Who could resist a dab of peanut butter? Anthony took the cage to the backyard, opened it, and shook the mouse out. “You got a second chance, little buddy. Use it wisely.”

  Anthony could only hope he’d be afforded the same opportunity.

  Things were looking up in one respect. Anthony wanted to celebrate but thought better of it. Even though the nightmares persisted, he had gone more than a week without a drink. As close as he was to getting answers regarding the seven black soldiers, though, he was getting no closer to normalizing his own life.

  Something in him, something unknown, continued to fester and boil. There were times his brain felt as if it was in a deep, dark hole that was impossible to crawl out of. Most times he felt like a different person, a person he’d have been afraid of in the past, and he felt helpless trying to return to the pre-Vietnam Anthony.

  Chapter 18

  A

  nthony felt the stare before he saw the man in Manny’s Five Star Restaurant sizing him up. The ex-boxer looked even bigger than Anthony remembered. But for some reason, it didn’t matter.