Chapter 22. Lemongrass Stains - Lost at Sea

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War is a haunting nightmare that some men are doomed never to extinguish for the rest of their lives.
“I am not a very trusting person anymore, Rich.” We both prefer the smaller green bottles of Chang Beer. However, I insist on the bottle insulator to keep the liquid chilled. Frank, on the other hand, downs his quickly enough to where it does not concern him. He has been drinking steadily ever since being discharged from the Marine Corps over forty years ago. He never fit in when trying to find his niche in Guatemala, New Zealand, Costs Rica, Mexico, or El Salvador. Ko Chang has been his home for five years, the longest stint he has ever lived in any one place. Well groomed, he wears the same yellow button down shirt with the Thai royal insignia. At the age of sixty, only a few grey strands mix in with a full head of wavy dark hair. The pub is his home as much as it is the living room for the Swiss owner and his Thai wife. Frank is comfortable here because he feels wanted and accepted.
All I need to do is raise my eyebrows to stir up more words. Frank wants to talk. He has a great deal to say and demands attention. “You want to know why?” The rhetorical question came with an unexpected burst of fury, one of many he unleashed upon me. The first time it caught me off guard. All the ensuing rages Frank tried to suppress put him closer and closer to an edge from which I feared he would not be able to rescue himself. “My friends took me in. And when I said to that, I don’t know, that entry person, ‘Can I leave anytime I want if I don’t like it here?’ He said, ‘Sure.’ They lied to me again. That was my government!!! It wasn’t true. There was no escape until some bunch of green shrinks that vomit at the sound of what combat is like say I am well enough to go. They don’t know that I will never, EVER be well. So, I gave them that impression so I could get out of there. All thanks to my friends.
“And least I wasn’t a retread!” , he went on.
OK, I had to bite although I feared he would jump off the barstool at me. “What’s a retread?”
In his best John Wayne, “Well, let me tell you.” He leaned into me. I gulped. “It’s when you go through government therapy a second time until they really straighten you out. In my group, Bill was the only retread. When the practitioner asked him in a group session what was the best thing that happen to him during the past week, he replied that he was the only one of seven in his first session not to have blown his brains out.”
Frank’s bitterness is almost a physical trait. “Once you go through that door, you just don’t come back and resume life as if nothing happened.” Frank was screaming again. But his Thai girlfriend and the chubby Swiss owner show little concern. Frank is part of the woodwork. To them, there is nothing to be concerned about. His short term memory is gone. He fails to recall my name. He has my card and refers to it when he addresses me. He tries to be polite and wants to be courteous. For Frank, this takes a huge amount of effort.
His comments came without any provocation or question. They surface after a period of sustained silence. “I don’t want to be a problem for anyone else.” He looks away from me at the parking lot and keeps silent for a few moments. On the brink of losing his composure, Frank bites his lower lip and grinds his teeth. He brings himself together again. He wants to keep telling me a story in spite of the pain it unleashes upon him.
“Do you want to stop?”
“No! I can do this! The U.S. considered me dead weight to society went I went home. He clenched both fists and took two deep breaths. I just didn’t fit in. It was too much for me to simply dismiss what happened. Not everyone could deal with it.” He paused and faced me glaringly. Examining my age, he asked, “How old is your father?”
“He was born in ’43. That would make him sixty-four.”
“He get drafted?”
“Yes, but he was stationed in Germany.”
“Lucky bastard.” Indeed. “He’ll never know what we-”
I took this risk to interrupt. “Yes, he will never know, Frank. And we need to let that go. You two would still have a lot in common if you two met. The times. Athletes of the era. Events that led to where each of you ended up. You’d enjoy the time with him. But, no Frank, neither he nor I will never know.”
“You know, those were the days when the family gathered around the TV and watched the news at dinner time. But let me tell you something right now!” He raised his voice involuntarily. “America didn’t have a clue what was really going on. They never knew the reality. I didn’t get a deferment.” He stood up and just about shouted, “While Jonathan and William went off to college, I fought next to Johnny and Billy!” Jonathan and William might have become officers. But Johnny and Billy will always be grunts.
I had to bring him away from his mounting anger. The next question was meant to be innocuous, but I did not get the desired result. Why Ko Chang of all places?”
“You wanna know why here?”
“Not if you don’t want to tell me. That’s up to you, Frank.”
“No, it’s OK. He lifted his Beer Chang bottle and put it to his mouth so that he could see through the bottom. He ordered another. “When I was in Central America, I could speak Spanish. Sometimes, I just ain’t a nice guy. It got me into trouble. Why Ko Chang? Easy! I cannot get into an argument in Thai. If I get pissed off, most people won’t understand me. So there’s no conflict. I cannot read the newspaper, so I don’t get angry at the headlines.” The language barrier for Frank works to his advantage. The less he knows, the better. The less he knows, the happier and more stable he is.
“Rich, I do want to be OK here. I have no reason to leave.”
“Thailand?”
“No, Ko Chang. I am accepted here. No one in Thailand ever accused me of being a baby killer.” As he spoke those words, a small tear appeared from his moist right eye.
He took a welcomed sharp turn in the conversation. “Do you know what? They call me the Garbage Man, the locals do.”
Where was he going with this? “The Garbage Man?”
“Yep, because when tourists come here and misbehave, I grab them by their shirts and tell them they better get on their first ferry in the morning back to the mainland. God help them if they don’t.”
“Have you ever had a-
“Nope. They all leave. That’s why they call me the Garbage Man around here. I clean up the island’s garbage and get it off the island.” I can only imagine the fear his stare would instill in some overconfident twenty-nothing full of liquor and aloofness. They’d have no idea what bear they would have disturbed. A part of me wants to see the man in action. The rest of me wants him to find some sense of balance.
Following a break for me to order another beer, and without provocation, he lashed out vocally, “And don’t call me some God damn hero! You got it?”
I kept silent. We stared at each other for thirty seconds until he started in again. His pulse raced and he could not organize the myriad of thoughts and images of the past racing through his mind. He dropped his head and squinted to extinguish the haunting pictures within. If he could, he’d prefer to shut it all down. But he wasn’t finished. He had more to say.
“Let me ask you something. Do you sleep well?”
I took it as a serious question. I gave it a few moments. I honestly could say that I do.
“Yes, really I do, Frank.”
“I don’t like to sleep. I dread it because at least when I am awake, I can control what I am thinking about.” Frank was alluding to nightmares that have never been suppressed.
I closed my notebook, indicating to him that we had gone far enough. His high state of unpredictable agitation had taken a toll on me. His girlfriend embraced him and escorted him gently out of the pub. Yet, Frank had one last parting shot he needed to relinquish. He turned around and pointed at my chest. “You want to do some good for others Rich? Maybe what you write will go somewhere, I don’t know.” I doubt he cared. “But don’t let what happened to me happen to those boys in Iraq and Afghanistan. You really want to help? Help them. They’re going to need it.”
Frank turned the corner and was gone. His ship has finally come in after aimless years in a sea of agitation, bitterness, and confusion. If he can help it, he does not ever intend to set sail again.

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