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Paradise

Posted by on September 12, 2014

 

“He found something that he wanted, had always wanted and always would want — not to be admired, as he had feared; not to be loved, as he had made himself believe; but to be necessary to people, to be indispensable…” F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

In 1967 the Vietnam War was still gaining momentum, but for Mark, the war was already behind him. He had done his time and went home. He had served as a medic, learning to bandage, to suture, to comfort in moments of incredible chaos and pain. He was nearly overwhelmed at the weight of this responsibility at only 19 years. Out of the fear of the consequences should he fail, he became good at what he did, yet it was harder than anything he had ever done. So many nights he would repeat to himself, “If I can do this, I can do anything”. Yet he did it and it was over. With experience in trauma and triage, he scored a job in his hometown as an E.R. orderly at Santa Monica Hospital and that suited him for awhile. Yet, increasingly he would wake with the certain vague feeling that something was wrong, though he could not quite put his finger on it. He became haunted by the sense that he was missing something, some part of himself….perhaps a forgotten arrangement, an important thing undone, but…nothing. In the not yet light of mornings, as he could hear the birds begin to stir…. he would get up and go outside, hoping that it would come to him. He did not feel happy. He did not feel sad. It struck him that he did not feel much at all….just empty. The room that he grew up in, the familiar rituals of family, his sisters, his folks, were all much the same. His friends too, ready to party, ready to make up for lost time, would come around each night to pull him back into the night scene where he was once “King of the Haps”, the man that made things happen. Home was the same; he was different. He had spent two years dreaming of being back and now he was, but wasn’t.

In the spring, he applied to University of Hawaii as a pre-med major and had gotten a favorable reply, though the college angle was more of a pretext than a reason. The closest he could come to a reason was he “wanted to catch his breath”. “Why not a UC or one of the State Colleges?” everyone seemed to ask. His answer would usually vary, but the truth sensed was that Hawaii was distant. Hawaii seemed simple, slow, uncomplicated…peace and palm trees.

The taxi driver at Honolulu Airport drove Mark directly to the YMCA. Evidently, this was the traditional first stop for guys carrying well travelled army duffel bags. He had given $125 to his mother before he left, telling her that he would call for it if he got stuck. $125 would get him home again if Hawaii did not pan out.

The Y was packed with others of a similar mindset. Perhaps half of the residents had once spent some quality R&R time on the island, had been discharged, and were drawn back as he was drawn back, looking for peace and paradise. His roommate at the Y was Bill, a stocky surfer from Escondido with a massive, bushy mustache and hair that had gone uncut since his recent discharge. He had spent significant time in-country. They discussed it once and then let it rest. Equally newly arrived and equally needing a toehold, they agreed to throw in together to find a place other than the Y and some means of making a living. It was on the third day of walking the beaches and applying for work at every resort, that Mark came across Karen and Binky, two waifs in their late teens, who offered him a hit of their Thai and told him about the house. The house was a wooden three story place a few blocks inland from the Ala Moana shopping center. Long ago painted yellow, now peeling and faded, the house stood narrow and high, a broad hallway on each floor with three rooms on each side. Steps rose from what was once a lawn to a generous porch, furnished with old sofas and a collection of mismatched chairs and cushions that had clearly accumulated over time. A recent drug bust had resulted in several empty rooms. For $30 bucks a month, $15 each, Mark and Bill moved into the first room off the porch: two bare mattresses (one scrounged from another room) and otherwise no furniture, but perfectly situated to access the near constant social life on the broad front porch and to watch the various comings and goings of the 20 odd residents of the building….most of them, conveniently, delightfully, women.

It took several weeks to satisfy everyone that Mark and Bill were not undercover cops, as it was rumored that the police had an eye on the place. Yes, there was a little weed smoked on the porch in the evening. (Hence, the paranoia.) In the evening, the guitars could be heard up and down the street. Mark saw it as fairly innocent, not nearly as wild of a group as his friends back home… in fact, pretty mellow. It turned out that the drug bust was based more on suspicion than fact. They found little or nothing. But they did find several under-aged residents whose parents had listed them as missing. So once every few weeks a cop named Daniel, would stop by in his flip fops and shorts to just chat with people. He was a true local, having spent his entire life on Oahu. No one seemed to mind too much, as he was cool and never stuck around for long. He seemed to get that the house was harmless and was even a bit attracted to the casual rituals of everyone walking to evening waves or showers at the harbor, or cooking communal meals, and, it was guessed, the proximity of so many single women. When Daniel found out that Mark used to do a little boxing, he invited him to the police gym to work out. This did not do much for the continued paranoia in the house, but most residents relaxed as Mark scored a job at a local camera shop, bought a guitar and a surfboard with his first paycheck, and became a regular in the evening strum and toke sessions on the porch. It was a little strange to him that he was not interested in any of the household goddesses. They were nice to him and he to them, but they all coexisted in the house and any relationship would be, well, complicated. He definitely did not want complicated. He liked that no one knew him, but seemed to just take him as he was. What he was really attracted to was the slow daily rhythm of life: morning waves, working in the camera shop, group cooking, and everyone on the porch for sunset.

It was during one of those evening sessions when Patrick Louie arrived. Patrick was Samoan by heritage and he was huge. (Perhaps he was not huge by Samoan standards, as Mark had met some truly giant Samoan locals in his wanderings. Patrick only stood about 5’10”, but his arms and legs were muscled and massive). As had Mark, Patrick Louie met a couple of the girls at the beach and he arrived like a huge bird dog , at first squatting his giant body on the steps and then making himself at home on the porch enough evenings that some of the girls began to retreat to their rooms as he approached. There was not much anyone could do about it, as no one was going to tell him he was not welcome, for he was not only large, he seemed sinister.

Then came the evening when he showed everyone just how sinister. There were only a few on the porch and Patrick sat sprawled across one of the small sofas, taking its entirety. A small group of locals sauntered by and one of them yelled in the general direction of the house. In a moment, Patrick Louie was up from his chair, off the porch, and pushing three guys around in the street. Mark slid into his room to put his guitar away, but in truth, he did not want any part of what was unfolding. Then he heard a scream and a stream of cursing from one of the girls. Evidently, it was not enough for Patrick Louie to punch around a guy half his size. When he was down, Patrick Louie placed his mouth on the curb and kicked him in the back of the head. Yet, as brutal and disturbing as it was, Mark remained on the porch, failing to rush to stop the bleeding, failing to step in, truly afraid to get anywhere near the raging Samoan in the street. Someone came up with an old tee shirt that could be pressed to his head and his friends helped him limp away. Now several of the girls were screaming and cursing, but Patrick Louie just returned to the porch, seemingly oblivious to the anger and horror in the house. Mark stood at the rail of the porch, barely able to breathe. In two years of treating wounds of every kind, the gore was always after-the-fact and it seemed to have a reason…after all, it was a war. What Mark saw unfold in that Honolulu street had no reason, yet it was more violence than he had ever witnessed. He felt sick, both at the thought of what had happened, which replayed in his head for weeks, and for his own cowardice, his failure to help. Less than a year ago, he would have grabbed his bag and hit the street running, ready to stop the bleeding, to get the man to safety, to do what he had been trained to do. On that soft Hawaiian night, he had just stood there on the porch, unable to move. It was the first time he had actually seen the enemy and he was terrified. He felt as if the blood that puddled in the street was his own, that it had drained slowly from his body. He thought that he had become immune to the sight of blood, but as he came and went over the next days, he was not able to stomach the dark stain now on the curb that looked like it would always be there. Patrick Louie did not come around for a few days, but when he did, he brought three friends.

It was about six in the evening and Mark had just gotten off work at the camera store. He had bought a small 150cc motorbike to get around and as he pulled up, the first thing Patrick Louie wanted was to ride it. Mark acquiesced. At the sight of a 300 lb frame eclipsing the entire small bike, Mark was sure that it would just crumble under him. Patrick Louie liked the bike and asked how much it cost, which led him to ask how Mark earned the money, which led him to learn where Mark worked. It was only another two days before Patrick Louie showed up at the camera shop. He bought some small item and handed Mark a $50 traveler’s check with a woman’s name on it.

The brief conversation went something like this:

“Cash this and give me my change”.

“I’m not sure about this, Patrick.”

“Don’t even make me think that you are not my friend.”

He got about $47 dollars in change. The next day he was back with another $50 check under the same name. On the third day, Mark’s boss came in from the main store to ask about the checks. They were, of course, stolen and he pressed Mark to describe the woman who passed them. Mark created a likely non-descript profile. When he returned to the house that night, his door was open and there were five guys in the room, one of them Patrick Louie. Another one was strumming Mark’s guitar. His door was obviously kicked in. Mark learned that Patrick Louie and friends were in the business of ripping off tourists. Their particular approach involved going to a tourist destination, like the Pali, watching tourists depart their cars to walk the trail to the lookout, and then kicking in the side windows to get purses, daypacks, cameras, and all the traveler’s checks they could gather. Being a savvy businessman, Patrick Louie decided that showing up at the camera store was too great of a risk, so he gave Mark a stack of stolen checks and told him to cash a few every day and he would be by for the money. Mark nervously took the checks. After Patrick Louie left, Mark noticed that they also took his guitar.

The checks sat heavily in Mark’s pockets for three days. Each evening he would be relieved to see his door closed when he arrived home. On the third evening, no sooner had he opened his door than he heard steps on the porch behind him. His heart pounding, he turned to face laid back, grinning Daniel. “Whaddup? Mind if I come in for a minute?” At that he eased into the room and sat propped up on Bill’s bed. Mark, on his own bed, did not see what Daniel saw as he gazed out at the porch, but suddenly Daniel was up from the bed, drew a pistol from some hidden fold in his back, and raced out the door to place his gun directly in the face of Patrick Louie who had appeared on the porch. Several of Patrick Louie’s friends stood on the lawn, momentarily uncertain whether to attack or retreat. In seconds, Daniel had all of them with their hands on the car they arrived in. He instructed Mark to run to the corner pay phone, dial 911, and tell them an officer needs assistance. Running anywhere at all seemed like a good idea. Before he even felt his legs moving, Mark was at the phone and dialing and then half of the Honolulu police force seemed to arrive.

And so Mark learned that Patrick Louie and Daniel had grown up in the same neighborhood. They had known each other their entire lives. Patrick Louie was currently wanted for a long list of petty crimes, but the most recent was an armed hold-up. In addition, the car he arrived in was stolen and there was a small shotgun in the trunk…along with a lot of traveler’s checks. As Patrick Louie was cuffed and led to a car, he glared at Mark and snarled. “I thought you was my friend. I’ll be seeing you. You’re gonna be a sorry man.” That was all that was said, but Mark could think of nothing else but that boy who lost his teeth in the street. Mark was already a sorry man.

The fact that Patrick Louie was off the porch, off the streets, and out of his life was reassuring to Mark for about 15 minutes. Then Daniel broke it to him that Patrick Louie was often a part-time enforcer for the crime syndicate in Honolulu. He would be out on bail in a matter of days. Daniel offered for Mark to stay with him and his family for a few days, but his candid advice was to get off the island as soon as possible.

Mark sold the motorbike to Bill for enough cash that he did not need to wire his mother for the ticket. Good. He’d have seed money when he got home. He gave his old surfboard to the house, and the next morning, Dell, the only resident with a car, drove him to the airport. Although he had half-heartedly registered for school in the fall, he had never attended a single class. And now Hawaii, like Vietnam, was behind him. Unlike his return from the service, there was no welcoming group at the gate. He hitchhiked with his one bag to Santa Monica, this time not feeling like the returning hero but something else. Two weeks later, responding to a loudmouth in a bar, Mark hit a guy so hard that he shocked himself. He knew that the guy deserved it, but Mark had never punched anyone in his life outside of the ring.  Another guy punched Mark and sprawled him on the floor, but it did not hurt as much as he expected. In fact, as he sat there in a puddle of beer and broken glass, he felt good for the first time in a month. Just after the holidays, he registered at the community college for the spring term.

Nearly ten years later, college and grad school behind him, Mark touched down in Honolulu on his way back from Australia, where he had been teaching at a high school on Moreton Bay. On the entire flight from American Samoa, he felt a deep unease. As he stepped on the tarmac, a pretty Hawaiian girl stepped up to him and placed a lei around his neck, giving him a warm “Aloha”, but he could only look past her, looking for the hulking shape of Patrick Louie. Despite frequent suggestions from his wife, Mark never returned to Hawaii. “Too many tourists”, he’d say. In the mid ‘80s, Mark watched a show called China Beach, about a medic in the Vietnam conflict. The beach hospital was clearly based on DaNang, which Mark recognized in a second. As he watched, he found himself beginning to softly cry and the next week he joined a Vietnam vets group which met weekly to begin processing some of what was lost those many years before.

 

 

 

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