Farewell Uncle Ho 69
This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.
Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.
Farewell, Uncle Ho
by Dennis Milholland
questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu
Chapter 69 (Sat., Apr. 22)
By the time we'd arrived in Scranton, Pennsylvania, we'd already heard the news on the radio about the heavy tornado devastation yesterday near Chicago, and here, it was raining, making driving hazardous, so I turned the wheel over to Gordon. The weather had cleared near Canandaigua, so I went back to driving. As we were approaching Buffalo, I became uneasy, not only because of the fog and drizzle, but because I'd spotted a POV registration decal for Fort Monmouth on the windshield.
"Was Matt Bailey stationed at Monmouth?" I asked Gordon in a low voice.
"Before he shipped overseas, yeah. Why?" Gordon answered from the back seat. As I pointed to the decal on the driver's side of the windshield, he asserted: "Aw Fuck. The border guards would a loved that one." and told me to park and get out of the car, so he could get to work on it.
I pulled into the gravel parking lot of a mom-and-pop's greasy spoon, which had been set up in an old railroad dining car, and we got out. "What do you want us to do?"
"Get a razor blade out of your shower kit." I opened the trunk and our suitcase, rummaged in my toiletries, and gave Gordon the razor blade. He proceeded to scrape off the decal. "Wanna go for lunch?" He nodded toward the diner.
Gerry's stomach growled, as it was known to do, giving us the answer. The smell of chili con carne was wafting out of the diner, which was listed as today's special. And the smell was indeed inviting.
***
While we were eating, I asked Gordon why he and Ju-Long, both decorated, active-duty soldiers, were aggressively supporting our idea of deserting to Canada. It didn't seem to be a likely stance to be taken by a Drill Sergeant, who trained soldiers for combat.
"Did you hear about Martin Luther King's speech up at Riverside Church, at the beginning of this month?" Gordon slurped another spoonful of chili.
Neither Gerry nor I knew anything about it. "At the beginning of this month, we were dealing with racists and rattlesnakes in Kentucky." I laughed at Gerry's description of our activities.
"Let's put it this way:" Gordon crumbled some saltine crackers into his bowl, dusted crumbs off his hands and reached into his jacket's pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. "King's basic tenor was, as he said: 'A nation that continues, year after year, to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.'
"He also quoted one of Vietnam's Buddhist leaders." Gordon moved into better light, as he read from his notes. "'Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that, in the process, they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism.'."
"Wow!" I was overwhelmed that King had been so bold. But at least someone had finally said it. And white folk didn't have enough civil courage. Then I looked at the notes, which I recognized as Gordon's handwriting. "Were you there?"
He nodded after having taken a spoonful of chili. After he hurriedly swallowed, he coughed. "Ju-Long and I had heard about it, and after we took Cam and the Bandit up to Gran's, we stopped by on our way home." He took a drink of ice water. "And the title of his speech said it all: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence."
"Could that also be part of Marv's motive to, almost literally, push us over the border, do you think?" Gerry questioned no one in particular; he sounded as if he were thinking aloud.
"Possibly." I tentatively thought about it. "Marv seems to have changed his mind about military service."
"That's one aspect that I didn't think about." Gordon finished his chili and pushed the bowl away and got out his cigarettes. "Rabbi Herschel was there along with quite a few Jews. Maybe Marv made it, too."
***
We were waved through the US border crossing on the Rainbow Bridge, and Gordon got out into the rain with our birth certificates for the Canadian officials. Following at most five minutes of an agonizing wait, he returned to the car. "Ben, they want to talk to you." Of course, my intestines almost emptied right there in mid air, high above the water rushing down the Niagara River, with the Falls in the fog and mist to our left. He paused, then laughed. "Gottcha. Just kidding; let's go."
"You should know not to fuck with a guy, whose lover has vast experience with rattlesnakes. Just ask First Sergeant Crockett." I growled playfully and put the Mustang into gear.
***
Since I could only just remember streetcars in Manhattan, well, except for the Queensboro Bridge, and they had been removed totally in France, by the time I'd arrived there, I was really taken with the trams in Toronto. The only things I had to get used to were my car tires getting slightly stuck in the rain-wet tracks and giving streetcars the right of way. Luckily, it had stopped raining. But the heavy cloud cover was making finding our way, using street numbers and names, more difficult than it was normally in a strange city.
We got to Marv's buddy's law office on the corner of Adelaide and Yonge Streets, close to Toronto's Adelaide Courthouse. We all agreed that it was a good location for a lawyer. And since we'd made it on time, I assumed that the middle-aged man with a black, rolled umbrella, wide-brimmed hat and trench coat, standing next to the building's entrance and looking at his watch, must have been Bernie Hyman.
I parked, we walked across the street, and I introduced us. His smile was friendly enough, yet somehow cautious, as he motioned to the entrance of the sooty, four-story, brick building, which could have been in Greenwich Village, except that there was no iron fire escape hanging off the outside. "The office is one floor up." His Brooklyn accent was still very noticeable.
Once we got settled in his maple paneled office, Mr. Hyman broke the tensed silence. "Marvin didn't say over the phone what your case is. All he told me that you'd be here on Saturday. But I assume that it has to do with relocating to Canada because of the draft."
"Not exactly." I went on to tell him about our situation, Marv's initial plan, that both Gerry and I were foreigners, and that, if for some reason, we wouldn't be permitted to stay in Canada, we still had time to report to our new unit without having been missed.
Mr. Hyman was taking notes without smiling. He looked up from his notes as soon as I was finished, rose and went to the bookcases, lining the wall to our left and removed two, leather-bound books, to which he referred while taking more notes. He returned to his desk and sat down. "To be perfectly honest, it doesn't look promising."
My gut feeling had been telling me that this was not going to work, ever since we'd crossed the border. "It's because we're already in the Army, and not draft dodgers, isn't it?"
Mr. Hyman nodded. "Although, Canada is not in SEATO, other Commonwealth Realms are, specifically Britain, Australia, New Zealand. And they're also involved in Vietnam, um, of course, with the exception of Britain. But having said that, Canada is a member of NATO, along with France, at least nominally now, and Germany, and as such, Her Majesty's Government will not afford political asylum to deserters from the military of any allied country. And the only reason Canada is now letting US draft evaders stay, is as a payback for the US policy of letting Canadian draft evaders stay in the US from the end of September 1939 to December 1941."
"Which means, we go back." Gerry said under his breath.
"Not necessarily." Mr. Hyman took a deep breath and let out a resulting sigh. "You could always flee to the country of which you are a citizen."
"No can do." I spoke up again. "When we went into the Army, I was still an American citizen, and Gerry was under twenty one. In the meantime my US citizenship has been revoked, and Gerry has become of age, which means that neither of us has a valid visa for the US stamped in our passports. Our military ID is proof of residence and working permit. We would have to show that when exiting the US, going anywhere."
"And, of course, you came on your birth certificates, today." Mr. Hyman explained aloud to himself, working things over in his mind.
"Well, except for me." Gerry offered this bit of too much information. "Since I was born in Germany, I had to borrow a birth certificate."
At that, Mr. Hyman's brain and very limited residual cordiality closed down. "I'll have to ask you to leave, Gentlemen." He fiddled with papers, not looking at us. "That'll be seventy dollars, please." Gerry opened his wallet and drew out almost a month's Army salary and handed it to him. "Oh," Mr. Hyman choked and coughed. "that was seventy Canadian dollars, which would be sixty five US dollars."
Gerry sneered a little, revealing a slight acidic tinge to what he was about to say, but on the whole, he managed to remain his usual friendly self. "Oh, please, do keep the change, Counselor."
***
"What was that guy's problem?" Gordon offered a round of cigarettes once we'd left the building.
"Faggots and Chinks and Krauts, oh my!" I sang, and Gerry sputtered and snorted with merriment, as he threw his arm around my shoulder and joined in. "Faggots and Chinks and Krauts!"
"You think?" Gordon snickered.
"Yeah, I know." I opened the door on the passenger's side, then went to unlock my own and got in. "He was just looking for an excuse to get rid of us, and borrowing a birth certificate was the straw that broke the bigot's back." I put my cigarette out in the ashtray and signaled to pull out into non-existent traffic. "Let's head back."
***
"Do you think that he's going to report us?" Gordon sounded worried and lit another cigarette off the butt of his last one.
"Not if he knows what's good for him." I tried to quiet Gordon and Gerry, my two brave ones. "As Marv once explained to me, there's something in most legal systems called attorney-client privilege." I patted Gerry on the knee and reached between the bucket seats to pat Gordon's. "And if he so much as whispers anything to the authorities, I'll have his ass slammed into prison faster than he can fart."
The minute I said that, though, I was not so terribly sure that attorney-client privilege would apply, since crossing the border with fraudulent documentation was indeed a criminal offense, and an attorney was not required to keep quiet about a crime to be committed in the future. So, I made sure that we made good time in the direction of Niagara Falls.
The rest of the trip back to Staten Island went slowly in quiet frustration. Fog and drizzle were the reasons for the slow progress, and the ex-American Canadian lawyer was still the cause of frustration. Not that any of us thought that he'd given us bogus information, it was just the condescending way, in which he'd concluded it.
I also wanted to remind myself not to ask Marv for anymore advice.