"They don't argue with you," I said.
"They do not. I've punched a couple of them. You play poker?"
I did not, but I'd heard many colorful stories about various poker games around town. Quickly, I thought this might be interesting. "A little," I said, figuring I could either find a rule book or get Baggy to teach me.
"We play on Thursday nights, in a shed at the nursery. Several guys who fought over there. You might enjoy it."
"Tonight?"
"Yeah, around eight. It's a small game, some beer, some pot, some war stories. My buddies want to meet you."
"I'll be there," I said, wondering where I could find Baggy.
* * *
Four letters were slid under the door that afternoon, all four scathing in their criticism of me and my criticism of the war. Mr. E. L. Green, a veteran of two wars, and a longtime subscriber to the Times, though that might soon change, said, among other things:
If we don't stop Communism it will spread to every corner of the world. One day it will be at our doorstep, and our children and grandchildren will ask us why we didn't have the courage to stop it before it spread.
Mr. Herbert Gillenwater's brother was killed in the Korean conflict. He wrote:
His death was a tragedy I still struggle with each day. But he was a soldier, a hero, a proud American, and his death helped stop the North Koreans and their allies, the Red Chinese and the Russians. When we are too afraid to fight, then we will ourselves be conquered.
Mr. Felix Toliver from down in Shady Grove suggested that perhaps I'd spent too much time up North where folks were notoriously gun-shy. He said the military had always been dominated by brave young men from the South, and if I didn't believe it then I should do some more research. There were a disproportionate number of Southern casualties in Korea and Vietnam. He concluded, rather eloquently:
Our freedom was bought at the terrible price of the lives of countless brave soldiers. But what if we had been too afraid to fight? Hitler and the Japanese would still be in power. Much of the civilized world would be in ruins. We would be isolated and eventually destroyed.
I planned to run every single letter to the editor, but I hoped there might be one or two in support of my editorial. The criticism didn't bother me at all. I felt strongly that I was right. And I was developing a rather thick skin, a fine asset for an editor.
* * *
After Baggy's quick tutelage, I lost $100 playing poker with Bubba and the boys. They invited me back.
There were five of us around the table, all in our mid-twenties. Three had served in Vietnam - Bubba, Darrell Radke, whose family owned the propane company, and Cedric Young, a black guy with a severe leg injury. The fifth player was Bubba's older brother David, who had been rejected by the draft because of his eyesight, and who, I think, was there just for the marijuana.
We talked a lot about drugs. None of the three veterans had seen or heard of pot or anything else prior to joining the Army. They laughed at the idea of drugs on the streets of Clanton in the 1960s. In Vietnam, drug use was rampant. Pot was smoked when they were bored and homesick, and it was smoked to calm their nerves in battle. The field hospitals loaded up the injured with the strongest painkillers available, and Cedric got hooked on morphine two weeks after being wounded.
At their urging, I told a few drug stories from college, but I was an amateur among professionals. I don't think they were exaggerating. No wonder we lost the war - everybody was stoned.
They expressed great admiration for my editorial and great bitterness for having been sent over there. Each of the three had been scarred in some way; Cedric's was obvious. Bubba's and Darrel's was more of a smoldering anger, a barely contained rage and desire to lash out, but at whom?
Late in the game, they began swapping stories of gruesome battlefield scenes. I had heard that many soldiers refused to talk about their war experiences. Those three didn't mind at all. It was therapeutic.
They played poker almost every Thursday night, and I was always welcome. When I left them at midnight, they were still drinking, still smoking pot, still talking about Vietnam. I'd had enough of the war for one day.
Chapter 29
The following week I devoted an entire page to the war controversy I had created. It was covered with letters to the editor, seventeen in all, only two of which were even somewhat supportive of my antiwar feelings. I was called a Communist, a liberal, a traitor, a carpetbagger, and, the worst, a coward because I had not worn the uniform. Every letter was proudly signed, no anonymous mail that week; these folks were fired-up patriots who disliked me and wanted the county to know it.
I didn't care. I had stirred up a hornet's nest and the town was at least debating the war. Most of the debates were one-sided, but I had aroused strong feelings.
The response to those seventeen letters was astounding. A group of high school students came to my rescue with a hand-delivered batch of their own. They were passionately against the war, had no plans to go fight in it, and, furthermore, found it odd that most of the letters the prior week were from folks too old for the armed forces. "It's our blood, not yours," was my favorite line.
Many of the students singled out particular letters I'd printed and went after them with a hatchet. Becky Jenkins was offended by Mr. Robert Earl Huff's statement that "... our nation was built by the blood of our soldiers. Wars will always be with us."
She responded: "Wars will be with us as long as ignorant and greedy men try to impose their will on others."
Kirk Wallace took exception to Mrs. Mattie Louise Ferguson's rather exhaustive description of me. In his final paragraph he wrote, "Sadly, Mrs. Ferguson would not know a Communist, a liberal, a traitor, or a carpetbagger if she met one. Life out in Possum Ridge protects her from such people."
The following week, I devoted yet another full page to the thirty-one letters from the students. There were also three late arrivals from the warmongering crowd, and I printed them too. The response was another flood of letters, all of which I printed.
Through the pages of the Times, we fought the war until Christmas when everyone suddenly called a truce and settled in for the holidays.
* * *
Mr. Max Hocutt died on New Year's Day 1972. Gilma knocked on my apartment window early that morning and eventually got me to the door. I'd been asleep for less than five hours, and I needed a full day of hard sleep. Maybe two.
I followed her into the old mansion, my first visit inside in many months, and I was shocked at how badly it was deteriorating. But there were more urgent matters. We walked to the main stairway in the front foyer where Wilma joined us. She pointed a crooked and wrinkled finger upward and said, "He's up there. First door on the right. We've already been up once this morning."
Once a day up the stairs was their limit. They now were in their late seventies, and not far behind Mr. Max.
He was lying in a large bed with a dirty white sheet pulled up to his neck. His skin was the color of the sheet. I stood beside him for a moment to make sure he wasn't breathing. I had never been called upon to pronounce someone dead, but this was not a close call - Mr. Max looked as though he'd been dead for a month.
I walked back down the stairs where Wilma and Gilma were waiting right where I'd left them. They looked at me as if I might have a different diagnosis.
"I'm afraid he's dead," I said.
"We know that," Gilma said.
"Tell us what to do," Wilma said.
This was the first corpse I'd been called upon to process, but the next step seemed pretty obvious. "Well, perhaps we should call Mr. Magargel down at the funeral home."