"DR.  DEATH"
By Alan Catlin

     I've  never  actually  left The Nam, maybe that's a big
part of my problem in this life.  The more I think about it,
the more I become  convinced  that  I'm  one of those people
born to fight a ghost war with shadows in a  jungle  at  the
end  of  the mind.  How could anyone ever leave that kind of
war behind?

     The dream Vietnam  will  be  forever  imprinted upon my
mind like some kind of cerebral tattoo.  The visions that go
along with it are whole layers of life lifting off the earth
fueled by  napalm,  streamlining  everything  in  its'  path
completely out of existence.  Life after, gradually became a
gigantic  horde  of  hopped  up fire ants crawling inside my
dreaming, digging under my skin  and never leaving.  I can't
actually remember feeling any kind of release from this kind
of in-body, out-of-life experience until the third  pint  of
Bass, ever since I came back.

     Even  as the fourth pint of Bass depth charges its' way
through  the  inner  ozones,  I  remember  all  those nights
sitting in a bunker, on  hard  drugs,  counting  the  mortar
rounds  landing inside the perimeter and think, "This is it.
This is how i became what  I  am, a man sitting in darkness,
somewhere beyond the edge of nowhere."

     I feel as if I am cruising along the tips of  the  tree
lines, trip flares going off in Agent Orange hell.  The port
gunner  on the gunship is a guy with an unlit Cuban cigar in
his mouth, a half filled bottle  of Jim Beam in one hand and
an M-16 in the other, waiting  for  the  action  to  happen.
Even  twenty  five  years  after  the fact, that port gunner
looks exactly as I would have when I was 19.

     The music that accompanies these  visions in and out of
time is by Jefferson Airplane and we are  spiraling  out  of
the  sky  to touch down with fire.  My right hand man is Air
Head and he is saying that the concussive shock of all those
nights spent out in the field, hugging the ground, absorbing
the vibrations from  B-52  runs  and  doing acid has finally
warped what little that  was  left  of  my  brain.   "Hell,"
Airhead  says," Pretty soon you'll think that you're back in
Kansas with Auntie Em.  what the  hell you going to do for a
connection in Kansas, son?"

     "Beats me?" I say.

     "Open your eyes, son," A.H.  says,  "Dig  the  scenery,
the  way of life here.  I mean, where else do the palm trees
glow  at  night  and  the  paisley  colored  ants  sing Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely hearts Club Band in Viet Ham Ese?   This  is
the living end, son, enjoy it while you can and stay off the
hallucinogens.   Pretty  soon you'll be hearing Chairman Mao
making radio contact through  some  special frequency in the
fillings of your teeth and it's all over then, padre.   Keep
to  the  low level drugs and alcohol for the field and leave
the hard shit for R&R.  Take it from one who knows."

"Whatever you say, A.H., you're the pro." I say.

     "And don't you ever forget it."

     How could I ever forget  A.H.?   He was the kind of guy
who liked the shit And the fan, dug the  field  because  out
there  he  was in total control, able to run his own kind of
mission with his special objectives.  A.H.  was what happens
when someone allows  a  well  trained,  heavily armed twenty
year old with a Grim Reaper Complex loose, with  no  one  to
stop him.

     "Just remember Old son, never go into the field without
a  short  arm,  completely  loaded.  You never know what you
might need out there."

     "----whatever you say, A.H." I say.

     "Excuse me." she says.

     I open my eyes and see  this girl sipping a Long Island
Iced Tea through a straw and wonder how she could have ended
up in this bunker.  She hadn't been there when the  incoming
started.  No one was actually.  Not even me.

     The  incoming  is  a  shit storm of sound from the disc
playing monster juke in  the  corner  of  the room.  I think
that my dead ear drums would bleed all over again  from  the
mind  boggling  decibel level of Guns & Roses wiping out all
life in the back room.

     "There  is  no  reason  to  be  rude,  we  haven't even
actually met." she says.

     She isn't from any  war  zone  I  remember.   There  is
something  so  incredibly  youthful  about her that suggests
years of probation just  thinking about touching her.  Maybe
even hard time.

     So I decide to buy her a drink.   I'd  done  plenty  of
hard  time  already.   What's a few more years in stir among
friends?

     "Doctor Death," I  say,  "Another  pint  of your finest
bass Ale for me and whatever the lady is drinking."

     "A little bit late in the month for your welfare check,
Ray.  You got any president's faces I might recognize?"

     "I put in more overtime in  the  last  two  weeks  than
you've done in ten years, clown."

     "We  don't  do tabs here, Ray, you know that and you're
light three pints already."

     "It's a good thing I love you or else they'd be picking
pieces of you out of a dumpster in Cleveland for weeks."

     I peel off two Andy Jacksons  from the wad and lay them
on the wood and say to Dr.  Death,"Here's the hard stuff, do
your worst."

     To her I say,"What do you think?"

     "Think about what?" she says.

     "Anything.   How   about   Wittgenstein's   theory   of
transcendental  linguistics or maybe the new starting lineup
of the New York Mets?"

     "What?"

     "I'm sorry,  the  shrooms  I  took  like  hours ago are
wearing off and I had this incredible nightmare.  I dreamt I
woke up straight for like the first time since I was ten."

     "You have shrooms?"

     "Had, sweet thing."

     "Can you get more?  I love shrooms."

     "Could but  it  might  take  a  long  time  to  get  to
Cleveland even by fax machine."

     "Why Cleveland?"

     "It's  the  end  of  the  earth,  babe, the phrase Shit
Happens was invented there."

     It wouldn't take a genius  to  see that I was doing bad
time   with   this    babe.     At    best,    I    was    a
one-free-drink-weirdo-  in  old  army clothes with a strange
rap and an aura  that  went  out  of  style with the fall of
Saigon.  Eventually it clicks why  she  is  hanging  out:  I
might  have  access  to dangerous drugs and bucks to ply the
recalcitrant Doctor D with.

     "She's taking you  for  a  ride, Raymond." Doctor Death
counseled.

     "I've been on rides before, Doctor.  I used to  do  R&R
riding  tail gunner on Big Birds for fun, chugging Mr.  Beam
from the bottle  straight  and  shooting  every moving thing
from one end of the delta to the next."

     "Must have made you one hell of a popular guy."

     "I got more KIA's that three Thai Gods could count."

     "Still, you were a lot younger then,  in  better  shape
and on better drugs."

     "What  are  you, my conscience?  I've been on drugs all
my life."

     I was exaggerating, as always,  and the Doctor knew it.
Still she was young enough to be impressed by a strange line
and a wad of twenties.  All I needed to be  the  epitome  of
weirdness  was a swastika carved in my forehead and "Born to
Raise Hell" tattooed  on  my  forearm.   It didn't help that
Doctor D was publicly teasing me about all the atrocities  I
had  committed  and he wasn't talking about my tour of duty.
It's tough to  make  time  when  someone's telling your babe
what a pig you are.

     Atrocities.  Jesus, life is one long string  of  things
you  wish  never happened and I was beginning to think I was
in the middle of something  else  I  was  going to add to my
growing list of Life Experiences I Could Have Avoided.

     "Where do you get them?"

     "What?"

     "All of those drugs?"

     "I was in Special Forces.  We can get anything."

     "I'll leave  with  you  now,  if  you  can  promise  me
something cool."

     Cool.   I  loved  that  word.  She was probably a loner
loser doing some kind of bad-act undercover drug enforcement
routine and I was going to  have  to weird her out big time.
Kools are what we smoked on the edge, man.  We  clipped  off
the filters and took whatever we could stuff in there, hard.
Sometimes it was 100 percent uncut H. You don't forget stuff
like  that  and  you can spend the rest of your life looking
for it and failing.

     "Alas, my young  friend,  the Dispensary is temporarily
closed." I say.

     "There's something incredibly strange about  you.   For
instance,  why  do  you  keep  calling  the bartender Doctor
Death?"

     "He killed a man with a martini, once."

     "That's sick."

     "Yes, but it's true, ask him."

     "Never mind.  What do  you  do with what you laughingly
call a life, to earn a living, I mean?"

     "I'm a living cadaver.  I sell off parts of my body  to
see if the old ones will regenerate."

     "What?"

     "I  have  the  scars to prove it.  I donated my body to
science to show people, especially the young, what not to do
with your body and go on living."

     "That's a twisted way of looking at things."

     "Here, I'll open up  my  shirt  and show you something.
See those, they're called scars.  Amazing  what  a  homemade
Cong  mortar  round  can do for an unsuspecting human being.
The bottom line,  babe,  is:  don't  ever  get involved in a
shooting war."

     "I've seen enough, I gotta split."

     "That's what they all say.  Hey,  I  thought  you  were
like  in  Pre-Med  or  an  apprentice  narc.   Actually, you
disappoint me.  I thought you  were used to seeing mutilated
bodies."

     "It's not the bodies that bother me so much,  it's  the
heads that go with them."

     I assumed that was the final dust off and it was.  Mine
was basically a solitary mind and it liked sick things.

     So  I smile at the hazy image of myself in the back bar
mirror becoming  lost  in  a  haze  of  cigarette  smoke and
alcohol.  Dr.  Death is working at his steady, frantic  pace
allowing  that  song  by  Billy Joel about a piano bar play,
despite all my warnings  about  the probable consequences of
hearing it might cause.  Billy Joel always makes me think of
"going down together", making a total mess out  of  people's
lives  with  B-52's,  flame  throwers  and  termination with
extreme prejudice.

     Still  the  Doctor  is  cool  about  my  recent aborted
mission,  "Have  one  on  me,  Raymond,  fishing  was  tough
tonight."

     "What's this?"

     "You're favorite poison, Raymond.  Dudes like  us  have
to  stick  together,  Raymond.   It's  like that line in the
movie where Richard Harris is a demolition expert defusing a
bomb: 'if it were easy  everyone  would be doing it and then
what would become of us?'"

     "Does that mean my days are numbered  now?   You  never
buy anyone a drink."

     "Never  say  never, Ray.  Besides, we all die soon.  To
your health."

     "Whatever you say, A.H."

     We touch glasses  and  slug  down  something amber that
could melt down  internal  organs  faster  than  an  out  of
control nuclear reactor.

     Everything  is unclear for awhile afterwards.  The next
thing I recall is the doctor tapping me on the shoulder with
this shit eating  grin  on  his  face  saying, "Raymond, you
don't look too good, you alright?"

     It's like coming home from  The  Tour.   Everyone  says
they are glad to see you but no one means it.