Queenie's Place

Chapter One

Doreen

Rows of eucalyptus trees, their tattered leaves dancing in the balmy, salt-scented breeze, lined the fields surrounding Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, California. Despite the beautiful spring morning, my hands gripped the car’s steering wheel and my nervous fingers tapped to Gladys Knight and the Pips singing Midnight Train to Georgia. After thirteen long months, my husband was coming home from his second tour in Vietnam.

I felt the adrenaline surging through my body, while questions zipped around in my brain. Had he changed? More to the point, how had he changed? After so many long and confiding letters crisscrossing the Pacific Ocean, it seemed we’d shared every thought, every feeling. And yet, I knew there were things he hadn’t shared, things he’d witnessed, things he’d done, that would remain buried in his memory, things that would only come out in the form of dreams and night-sweats. Just like after his first tour.

While he’d been gone that first time, I’d thought that when he came home we’d be the ideal couple living a fairytale life, happily ever after and all that. But it had taken us months to readjust to one another. How would it be this time?

Billy kept his eyes trained on the rolling, windblown hills that separated us from the Pacific Ocean, the direction his father’s plane would come from. Although the freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks came from me, my son looked exactly like Tom must have looked at his age—the same green eyes and narrow face, the same sandy hair that gets lighter and lighter until it’s nearly white by August.

And like his father, Billy’s thoughts ran deep. Only that morning he told me how he’d tried to keep Tom’s memory hazy while his father was away, tried not to remember their camping trips to Big Bear, tossing a baseball in the backyard or the two of them stretched out on the living room floor playing Chinese checkers.

I figured if I thought of him as a flesh and blood person, it might cause something bad to happen.

How do you mean? I asked, frowning.

"Well, like if I thought about him as a real person all the time, it might invite evil spirits

to do something bad to him."

Evil spirts? I shook my head. What twelve-year-old thinks something like that?

We arrived at the base to see several other families had already gathered on the tarmac. Many of them I knew, others only by sight. We stood in little clusters and made desultory conversation, but every eye, including mine, flicked constantly skyward, searching the western horizon.

A tall Marine, his hair shaved close to his skull, cried out, There she is—the big bird with the brass ass.

I peered into the hazy distance to see a speck become a plane with a golden tail section. Moments later, the Continental 707 set down and swiftly taxied the length of the runway before turning and heading toward us.

I grabbed Billy’s hand. I didn’t think this day would ever come.

Jet wash blew over us, plastering our clothes to our bodies and whipping my long hair around my face. When the plane finally came to a stop and the engines cut, the ground crew rolled up the portable stairs.

Not a whisper rose from the waiting crowd; we were all suspended in individual cocoons of silence, not even daring to breathe in case the spell broke. I felt like every minute Tom had been gone from me was condensed into the brief space of time before the plane’s door opened.

The first Marine stepped out and a ragged cheer went up. Tall, bronzed, wearing aviator sunglasses and a short-sleeved, summer-weight uniform, he bounded down the stairs, followed closely by more men in uniform. Heart racing, I scrutinized their faces, each with the hot Vietnamese sun etched into his skin, searching for Tom.

There he is, I screamed and ran forward, pulling Billy behind me.

Tom took the steps two at a time. When he reached the tarmac, he opened his arms. I dropped Billy’s hand and ran into them. Tom’s kisses rained over my face and I felt as though I would explode with thirteen months of pent-up longing. His arms tightened. When we finally pulled apart, Tom turned to Billy, then grabbed and hugged him. He held our son at arm’s length, struggling to say something, but he couldn’t get the words out, only Billy’s name, over and over. He grabbed him again.

Later that evening, with Billy in another room, Tom told me his orders had been changed at the last minute. I’ve been reassigned to Marine Corp Base Camp Puller, North Carolina. Although he faked nonchalance by fingering a bead of moisture running down the side of his glass of beer, he couldn’t keep a degree of apprehension from his voice.

Camp Puller? I swallowed. Camp Puller was known to any West Coast Marine who’d been stationed there as the armpit of the world. Payback for my anti-war marches, I suppose.

Although Tom didn’t say so, I knew and he knew I was right.

Billy didn’t take the news well, either. At first euphoric to have his father home, in the days that followed he became angry and worried: angry at needing to give up his hard-won position as pitcher on his Little League team, and apprehensive over starting a new school in the middle of the school year. Tom’s and my assurances didn’t relieve his fears.

You don’t know, he told us. What if everybody hates me and I can’t make any friends? What if it turns out they’re ahead in school. I could get put back a grade.

Tom sympathized, but only up to a point. Don’t worry so much. You’ll do fine. Besides, it’ll be a good learning experience for you.

Billy wasn’t consoled, and I didn’t blame him. The learning experience bit sounded more like punishment than something to look forward to.

Truth be told, I was as nervous about the move as my son. By nature, though, I’m upbeat. So, I put on as good a face as I could muster, and packed the things I didn’t trust to the movers, all the while telling myself Camp Puller couldn’t be as bad as people said.

***

After a brief side trip to San Francisco to see Tom’s parents, we headed east. After six long days of driving, with Tom still half-feral from his thirteen months in the jungle—silent one moment and boisterous the next, jumping at the slightest noise—Billy in the back seat with his nose buried in one of a stack of comic books, ignoring us and determined to remain on a path of semi-passive rebellion, and me struggling with guilt for this move, we finally arrived in the part of North Carolina where M.C.B. Puller was located.

I’d never seen country so flat; in California, if not the ocean, then mountains, cliffs or rolling hills filled the horizon. Here, the highway stretched out in front of us like a long grey ribbon between stands of loblolly pines—toothpick trees Tom called them—and tobacco fields that seemed to go on and on. I had the surreal feeling there wasn’t anything holding us down, that we might simply lift off the pavement and fly into nothingness. I closed my eyes and tried to shake the vision from my head. After a while, I must have dozed. When I woke, my eyes locked on a sign looming high above yet another field and visible from a long way off:

WELCOME TO KLAN COUNTRY

Guilt momentarily forgotten, I whipped around to face Tom. My God, what kind of place have you brought us to? What kind of people would advertise their own racism?

Billy leaned over the seat. How come they spelled clan with a k?

Tom ignored our questions. Although he kept his eyes on the road, the muscle in his cheek twitched, a sure sign he was upset—whether with me or the sign, I didn’t know. Right then, I didn’t care.

We traveled on in silence. Billy went back to his comics. I continued to brood about the sign and the future. I had plenty of friends in California, people who shared my values and had the same outlook on life; the women I frequently marched with. Would I ever make friends in a place that already seemed foreign and hostile?

Billy spoke up. That sign was about the Ku Klux Klan, wasn’t it?

I glanced over my shoulder and nodded at him.

We’ll be living on base, though, right? Not in town?

I nodded again.

He leaned back in his seat, appearing satisfied the Klan wouldn’t be something he needed to add to his list of worries.

We rounded a bend and came to a small settlement with a church at its center. Draped above the door, a banner read CHRIST IS COMING BACK, ARE YOU READY? I looked over at Tom once again. "If He’s coming back here, I hope He’s ready—He’ll certainly have his work cut out for Him."

***

By the time we drove into Richfield, the town outside Camp Puller, it was early afternoon, and I’d managed to regain my determination to look on the bright side. Put your comic book away Billy. This is Church Street we’re coming to. I bet we’ll see one of those beautiful old southern churches, surrounded by hundred-year-old magnolia trees.

Yeah. He didn’t bother looking up.

Tom wasn’t buying our son’s rude behavior any longer. You’re beginning to overstate your position, Billy. I knew by his tone he was about one more ‘yeah’ away from losing his temper entirely. I know you’ll miss your friends in California. I know you’re sore about losing your spot on the team, but we’re going to live in North Carolina now. Get used to it.

Tom… I hesitated, not finishing my thought, but I wanted to warn him that he needed to ease up, that Billy needed a little more time. Our son had run out of time as far as Tom was concerned.

No, Doreen. We’ve been patient long enough. He looked at Billy in the rearview mirror. You got that, son? I want that attitude of yours changed and I want it changed now.

Yes, sir. Tom didn’t pull rank often, but when he did, Billy got it.

Good. Now do what your mother said.

Billy put Captain America and the War of the World on the seat next to him as we turned onto Church Street.

My breath caught in my throat, as all I saw were bars and tattoo parlors. Three scantily dressed women, hands, arms, and hips all in motion, stood laughing and talking in front of a bar advertising Go-Go dancers. A fellow with a Marine haircut strolled up to them. One of the three broke from the group and went inside with him. A man with a mean look on his hatchet-thin face came from inside the bar and spoke to the other two. He grabbed the smaller one’s arm, said something to her then went back inside. She made a face at his back and the other woman laughed.

Tom had put the car’s canvas top down when we’d stopped on the outskirts of town for gas, and people now stared as we drove down the street. I felt as exposed as Lady Godiva.

We passed a pawnshop and a motel that rented by the day, week, or month. A little girl, dragging a doll by one foot, pedaled her tricycle in front of one of the motel rooms; visible through the room’s open door, blankets were piled on the floor at the end of an unmade bed. We passed more bars and then a furniture and appliance store with a handwritten sign taped to the window, 90 Days Same as Cash, before we finally came to the church. It had two-foot high weeds where a lawn must once have been, and a For Sale sign nailed to the door. There were no trees. Cheeks glowing neon red, I stared straight ahead.

Camp Puller’s main gate could have been the main gate at El Toro or Camp Pendleton. The rigidity that had crawled up my back and squatted at the base of my neck, eased at the familiarity. Not much, though.

The guard drew to attention and saluted.

Afternoon, Corporal. Where’s the housing office? The heartiness in Tom’s voice didn’t fool me. He had to be mentally bracing for what I would say once Billy was out of earshot—and I had plenty to say.

We followed the guard’s directions, past neatly landscaped administration buildings and barracks, past the commissary and PX. A group of Marines in red and gold work-out gear jogged in formation along the side of the road. In the parade ground, another group of Marines, these in work uniform, marched before an empty reviewing stand.

We were in a different world from the one we’d left outside the gate, a world of uniformity and discipline, a world where everything had its place and stayed in it. I filled my lungs with the humid North Carolina air, unsure how I felt about living fulltime in such a rigid environment.

While Tom went into the housing office to check on the house we’d been promised, Billy and I waited in the car. Billy leaned over the seat and fiddled with the radio dial, trying to find something besides gospel or country music. I fanned myself with my hat.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so hot and sticky in my entire life, I said. It feels like a steam bath and it’s only the first week of April. What do you suppose it will be like in August?

Billy shrugged. He gave up finding something on the radio and fell back in his seat.

Tom came out of the housing office with a set of keys, a map and another piece of news that fell on me like a rock.

Camp Puller doesn’t have a middle school, Billy. You’ll go to one in Richfield.

I’d assumed Billy would go to school on the base. After the drive down Church Street, I couldn’t imagine my son going to school in Richfield. I drew a shaky breath, clenching my fingers together and then forcing them to relax. At that moment, I would have given anything to be back in California, Billy at his old school, with his old friends. From the clouded expression on his face, I suspected he felt the same.

Like everything else on a military base, where people live had an order to it, too—some might compare it to a caste system. At Puller, the general’s house was on the banks of the Little Jackson River—it was a big old antebellum place that looked like something from Gone with the Wind. The house must have been there when the government acquired the land, because even for a general, it was grandiose.

The rest of the officers’ housing at Puller was divided between field grade officers and company grade officers. The higher the rank, the closer the house was to the general’s. Enlisted housing was organized the same way only in a different area and with the base sergeant-major as its center. On a military base, no one needed to ask what rank your husband was, they merely asked where you lived.

At Puller, as I would soon find out, that question was often asked.

There it is. Number twenty-seven, Tom said. He pulled to the curb and turned off the engine. All three of us sat and studied the house. I thought it was a good thing the number was prominently displayed above the door, because up and down the street, on both sides, were identical brick houses. Each one had the same white front porch and glass-jalousie side porch, and each was set back in its own wide lawn.

Number twenty-seven was in the outer ring of field grade officer housing, because Tom had been promoted to major shortly before he left for Vietnam the second time. He’d told me the promotion surprised him. It’s because of the war—the Marine Corps needs experienced helicopter pilots. The promotion meant that he could stay in the Marine Corps until he had twenty years of service. Longer if he got promoted all the way to general.

There was never much chance of that, because in the Marine Corps, helicopter pilots didn’t get general’s stars. I thought Tom would have made a terrific general. Whenever I brought it up, though, he shrugged it off. You have to be a jet jockey to have a chance at making general. Or a grunt.

I think we both knew it wouldn’t have been in the cards anyway. Most Marines pride themselves on putting the Marine Corps before everything. I never felt that was so with Tom. To him, the Marine Corps served a means to an end—it allowed him to fly helicopters. I’m not saying he didn’t love the Marine Corps and his country. He did. But I also knew his abiding passion was for me. I loved that about him, but it was also a heavy responsibility, one I didn’t always live up to.

Our love affair began in college: UCLA Class of 1960. Well, Tom was Class of 1960. I waited tables at an off-campus diner catering to college students. But I felt as much part of the student body as my customers, and had no trouble serving up my opinions with the burgers and fries.

That’s how we met. Tom and some of his friends came into the diner for a meal. Soon, everyone began talking politics, specifically John Kennedy’s chances in the up-coming presidential election against then Vice-President Richard Nixon. I challenged Tom’s claim that Nixon was the logical choice. He said Kennedy didn’t have the experience needed to be president. I countered that no one could trust someone who’d been part of an administration that lied to the American public. I was referring to the U2 incident, when President Eisenhower denied that the U.S. had spy planes flying over Russia, then later admitted the Russians were right. He’d had to, since the Russians shot one down.

I’m sure it came as no surprise to those who knew him well, when Tom began to court me—by all accounts he’d showed a reckless streak from an early age. It also came as no surprise to me when JFK got elected. Tom and I married right after his graduation ceremonies.

Even though forewarned, I doubt Tom was fully prepared for marriage to me. How could he have known my support of Cesar Chavez and his National Farm Workers Union would lead to me marching back and forth in front of the base commissary waving a sign advising everyone to boycott grapes—especially given that I was eight months pregnant? When the military police arrived, I didn’t give up either my cause or my sign without a struggle.

I took part in other demonstrations, too, including one when Nixon came to Los Angeles after finally being elected President.

Nothing caused so much consternation, though, as when I started marching in anti-war demonstrations while Tom was in Vietnam. Whenever someone gave me grief about that, like the wife of his former commanding officer, I simply quoted Tom, who claimed anyone who’d ever been to Vietnam and didn’t hate the war was crazy as hell.

The thing is, I didn’t believe in half-measures. When I set my sights on something I felt was wrong, I gave it my all. Tom couldn’t have stopped me if he’d tried. Mostly he didn’t. In part, I think, because he was proud of my determination and spirit. Plus, I believe it amused him to see me saddle up, seize my lance, and go tilting at some windmill or another.

Little did any of us know how soon and how much that was going to change. Not yet though. For the time being, we needed to get settled in at Number Twenty-seven.

After flight school, except for when he was in Vietnam, Tom was stationed either at El Toro or at the helicopter base near Tustin, which made buying a house between the two a smart thing to do. Our little house on Orange Street didn’t stand out from the neighboring houses, but it was home. Billy spent many a long summer afternoon in the rope hammock Tom hung on the wide front porch. I loved seeing him there, alone or with one or two of his friends, all of them deeply engrossed in Billy’s stack of comics.

An ancient sycamore tree in the backyard was great for climbing. While Tom was away, Billy spent a lot of time under that tree, daydreaming. He told me he’d heard a theory that everything anyone did was preordained. Ever the contrarian, he’d wondered if he could complicate the grand scheme of things by starting to do one thing then doing the opposite.

But then I wondered if that was preordained, too. So maybe I should go back to doing what I’d originally planned. But then….

We both laughed. I told him I’d done the same thing when I was his age.

And did you wonder if you had an exact double somewhere, like people say? I wondered if somewhere else on earth—or even on a different planet—there might be another boy exactly like me, lying under a tree, imagining someone exactly like him.

I laughed again. "That is a big concept."

I know. Sometimes I get the feeling my brain will explode trying to rope in all the possibilities.

I felt certain we’d eventually go back to that house. I told Billy as much. But I knew he hated thinking about another boy or girl sleeping in his bedroom, climbing his sycamore tree, swinging in his hammock. Even worse, someone taking his place on his baseball team.

The house in North Carolina may have been bigger, but as we walked toward the front door of Number Twenty-seven that first time, I wondered if it would ever feel like home. Tom used the key he’d been given at the housing office, then waved Billy and me inside.

Our footsteps echoed on the bare, worn hardwood floor. The place smelled of fresh paint and disinfectant. As I’m sure most women would, I immediately headed for a door off the dining room. The kitchen must be this way, I called over my shoulder. Tom and Billy followed me into a sunny room with windows across two walls, and with enough room in front of them for the old scrubbed-pine kitchen table I’d found in a dusty little antique shop in Costa Mesa. I opened doors and peered into cupboards while Tom struggled to open the windows, one of which appeared to be painted shut.

Billy disappeared while I checked out the oven. A few seconds later, his footsteps sounded overhead. I left Tom to get the window unstuck, and followed Billy upstairs. I found him in a room with a window overlooking a tree-shaded side yard and the house next door. A boy who looked to be about Billy’s age tossed a baseball into the air and caught it in a well-used mitt. This looks like it would make a nice bedroom for you, I said. What do you think?

He answered in a noncommittal voice. It’s okay, I guess.

I was undeterred by his lack of enthusiasm. I think your bedspread and the curtains from your old room will work fine in here.

Still not looking at me, he shrugged his thin shoulders inside his olive-green t-shirt.

Or we could get you something new. Would you like that?

He shrugged again. My eyes narrowed. Despite Tom’s instruction to change his attitude, Billy plainly felt justified in remaining as unhelpful as possible.

Tom came upstairs and we explored. Our bedroom would be at the end of the hall, across the front of the house, with two good-sized windows. The closet isn’t much, I said. But we can use ones in the other rooms for our out-of-season things.