SECRET HEART

One year ago today, I drove a hearse to Mississippi. I really did. Well, in the company of my Dad, that is. You can believe me or not, but it’s true. I had just passed my driver’s ed test only two months before. I suppose I didn’t even know how to drive, really, but Dad, well, he must have trusted me enough to enlist me as his co-pilot. In retrospect, though, I wonder if it was not so much trust as something else that he had in mind. Well, I can tell you’re questioning the veracity of my account, but this is exactly how it all happened, when I was 16 and helped my Dad drive a hearse to Mississippi.

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My Dad’s brother, who ran the funeral parlor in our small town, was on a bender and couldn’t go pick up the corpse of an old-timer who was to be buried in the county cemetery. It wasn’t the first time my uncle had been incapacitated, because, like my Dad used to be, he was an alcoholic, so now the call of duty fell in Dad’s lap. And mine, too, apparently.

Before we left, Dad pulled me aside and said, “Son, we’ve got a lot to talk about on this trip. Now, I want to know. Can you keep a secret or three?”

“Sure, Dad,” I said, “What secrets?”

Dad flashed a movie-star good looks grin and said, “Well, son, if I told you, they wouldn’t be secrets now, would they? Just be patient.”

And so began my first road trip, an adventure of which I was a bit apprehensive, you must understand, given the circumstances. Could I do it with him? Did I want to do it with him? You can imagine my confused state of mind as I mulled over all the possibilities, good and bad. Well, at least I had to consider that for Dad, maybe, just maybe, the proposed road trip would be a vehicle, so to speak, for us to have an adventure together. I wanted to accept that simple little reality, but still I wondered, why the heck couldn’t we just go fishing or take in a ballgame? Wouldn’t it be kinda weird and awkward being in his company for four or five days?

Sure, the trip would provide a conciliatory setting for Dad and me to bond and finally get to know each other. See, I didn’t know Dad very well at all, really, not because of a generation gap but because of a love gap. After all, let’s face it, Dad was absent during my formative years. It was the alcoholism and wartime near-death experiences, a mountain of trauma he never purged from his heart and never talked about. But that war was surely awful, because Mom had told us that Dad had taken to the bottle right after the war and it was no secret of his fondess for Dark Eyes that helped him drown out the sorrowful, ugly memories. So that’s why, all those years of growing up, he never involved me in much of anything; in fact, he basically ignored me – all of us kids. He never paid an ounce of attention to me the way other kids’ dads doted over them, took them fishing, taught them how to properly catch a baseball or shoot a free throw or swing a golf club or build something. No, Dad’s always been in his own world, a sad bubble of alcoholism and depression. But when I was about fifteen, Dad miraculously snapped out of it, probably owing to Mom’s not-so-hollow threat to commit his “sorry ass” to a mental institution – for life! Boy, did that shape him up lickety-split! He quit boozing, cold turkey, just like that. So, I thought, maybe this mysterious trip about to unfold was Dad’s way of trying to be involved with me, make amends of a sort with his only son whom he’s always ignored.

It wasn’t long before Dad had regained a measure of his fading dignity among his family and the townsfolk in our community, trying as he was to get back on his feet after all the lost years, and having secured a pretty good but low-man-on-the-totem-pole clerical job with the State Highway Department. Underneath his gruff exterior of Marine Corps, Republican, God Bless America, John Bircher ultra-right conservatism, when you got to know him, Dad was, after all, a gentle soul possessed of a droll wit and deep appreciation of nature and animals, and he never once harmed me or spoke harshly at me, laid a hand on Mom or my sisters, or had a bad word to say about anyone, for that matter; but let’s face it (I was trying to get beyond it all) – Dad was a non-entity, emotionally absent during my formative years. I understood it and I did forgive him, because I knew a little about his battles, literal and figurative, how he struggled with his alcoholism and who knows what else, no doubt related to horrific war experiences seared into his heart and imprinted on his tortured soul like the stuff of nightmares any hardened battle vet must know about and deal with every single day they can’t forget about it. But being young, just a kid, and all the other kids in school are making fun of you and teasing and taunting you about your old man getting stopped for drunk driving and getting thrown in jail, it was hard to know the reasons why these things are the way they are, other than on the surface, as one mean classmate once shouted at me in the middle of study hall, with all the kids looking on, snickering or looking away in embarrassment, “Your old man’s a drunken bum, ha, ha ha!”

So, these were the facts of the circumstances, and the circumstances of the facts, and it didn’t appear I had much of a choice in the matter now, did it. It’s not like I could say no to Dad, could I?

Dad inquired at the dinner table the night before our departure, “Son, you sure you’re up for it, now.”

“Heck yeah, Dad! I can’t wait! It’s gonna be real fun! Are you really gonna let me do some drivin’?”

At first, Mom was like, “No way are you going off like this! You don’t even have your license,” she said, before correcting herself and adding, “Well, you do not have the experience to even drive over to Templeton, let alone all the way to Mississippi.” But Dad sweet-talked her and her heart softened and she relented once Dad explained that “it’ll be good for the boy, honey. And good for me. Good for us both, right.” Well, what could Mom say or do at this point, but give her blessings and secretly slip me a twenty dollar bill the next morning “in case of an emergency,” she said, hugging me and wiping away a tear.

For my part, I was determined to be open-minded about things. Sure, I was still confused, even though fully committed to following through. But nagging questions lingered: Was Dad still a big fat zero to me? Was I capable of forgiving him for the past, for not being there as my Dad? Or, was a different calculus in play now that he’d quit drinking and was trying to make up for lost time, to be a father, a parent? I didn’t know, honestly, but as excited as I was to be pulled out of school and launched into the big world outside of my little corner of Indiana, I couldn’t shake a cloud of malaise or quell a vague sense of uncertainty as we set off that foggy, chilly morning in Uncle Bernard’s big black Hearsemobile. Waving goodbye to Mom and my sisters, we were, as Dad always liked to say, “Off ‘n runnin’!” Soon, we were cruising down Highway 41 on our everlovin’ way to Mississippi! Yahoo!

At first, sitting silently gazing out the window watching scenery roll by, I felt like a shy hitchhiker picked up by a laconic stranger. Hmmmm, I was thinking: I don’t know this man – my Dad - very well at all, really. But Dad worked hard to make conversation and keep things upbeat and cheerful. The best of his personality was coming out, and as the miles clicked by, our comfort level with one another increased. I was surprised about all the things Dad started telling me, how funny and poignant and caring and loving Dad was, and all his interesting stories of this and that, of meeting and dating and falling in love with and marrying Mom, and having the surprise of his life when, unexpectedly, my twin sisters were born on April Fool’s day, and a spellbinding story in particular about the time he was in the war and he was starting to tell me about how he’d gotten trapped on some godforsaken Pacific island, but then he got distracted and suddenly pulled off at an exit for gas, and I never did hear the end of the story . . . until later, that is.

After filling up, checking the oil and cleaning the windshield at a gas station like out of the 40’s, Dad flashed me a wink, “Time to test your motoring skills, son.” He offered up the oversized driver’s seat with its gigantic steering wheel and floor pedals so far down I could hardly reach them and had to stretch my legs out and scoot the seat up as close to the steering wheel as possible. Dad said, “Now, be careful, make sure you’re wide awake, son. I trust you.” Then he handed over the big ol’ clanky key and I put it in Drive and we were – well – “Off ‘n runnin’!”

Dad was about to doze off, I could tell, but he waited for a spell while I deftly handled the beast of a machine. “Thatta boy, good job, son, you’re doing great, keep ‘er steady as she goes.”

I was thrilled to be in charge now, winding our lonely way along spooky swamps and moss-draped oak trees. Remember, I was barely sixteen years old, and never before had I found myself so far away from home; well, maybe that one trip to Cincinnati on my own, counts – the time I went to see the Reds and Cards play at the brand spanking new Riverfront Stadium; and come to think of it, all those countless trips up to Chicago on the Greyhound bus to spend partial summers with Mom’s brother, Gizzepp, we called him, short for, you can guess, being Italian and all, but now, here I was, leaving the cornfields of Tecumseh County behind, driving a friggin’ hearse all the way to Mississippi. I know, I couldn’t believe it myself!

Dad then dozed off, and I noticed him slightly twitching and emitting melancholy little cries. What foreign tongue was possessing him? What dreams were tormenting him? Though only fifty-two, he seemed old and worn out. I guessed alcoholism and the war will do that to a person.

I fiddled with the radio, tuning to a country station out of Lubbock, Texas. It was one lonesome song after another of heartrending fiddles, nostalgic train whistles and unrequited broken hearts. I looked out to admire the bucolic landscape passing by in a blur of old graveyards, weather-beaten churches with crooked crosses, vacant billboards, cotton fields, dirt poor farmsteads, and broken down buildings in boarded up little towns. Welcome to Mississippi a sign announced.

In the spacious cab of the Hearsemobile, I felt insular from the strange world out there. I was suddenly struck with an inexplicable urge to exit the highway down a side road and follow it straight into the mysterious heart of the Delta, where the secrets of the South would reveal themselves, come alive with meaning. But what did I know? Nothing, nothing at all, about Mississippi, or the South, other than it was the losing side of the Civil War and home of the blues and the birthplace of Elvis Presley. I never did turn down that side road, but still, I felt a boundless sense of freedom and awakening in this strange place that might as well have been Mali as Mississippi.

Dad was snoozing and barely stirred and the Hearsemobile didn’t miss a beat with its big powerful V-8 engine clicking on all cylinders. That’s when Dad began acting a little weird in his sleep, shifting his slight frame and reposing his knobby head on the side window, using a rolled up jacket as a pillow. He was murmuring almost inaudibly. I could barely make him out muttering, “Goddamn . . .” Then “Goddamn” something. Then I heard it – “Goddamn gooks.”

He said it again, and then again: “Goddamn gooks,” he mumbled, anger and fear clouding his voice. I could tell he was having one of his hallucinatory nightmares of those horrible war days fighting the Japanese.

What was I supposed to do? You tell me, Good Lord, what was I supposed to do with that?

I turned off the radio which had been playing a rock and roll number, and cocked my ear to hear what Dad kept muttering about. He was sleep-talking in some sort of nightmare trance he was having about his war days as a grunt Marine, tough as they come, heroically defending freedom in the Pacific Ocean Theater in World War II. (Jesus, what brutal “theater” it was, and what a stupid thing to call it, I thought; it’s not like they were acting!)

I recalled when I was eleven watching Dad crawl on his belly on the back porch, fake-shooting a tommy gun at spectral enemies – “the goddamn gooks” – he was forced to kill as a young man in his early twenties. And not just shoot and kill Japanese men soldiers, but boy soldiers as young as fourteen that he knew in his mind he had killed because “the goddamn gooks” ordered them in to battle, and worse, used women and children as human shields when crossing enemy lines. Orders were “shoot to kill.”

Dad had been a mama’s boy, I’d been told, but by the time he was in college, with war raging and patriotism at an all-time high, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps: Company I, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Division. The Old Breed. Semper Fi. This much I did know: Dad’s unit was one of several waves that stormed ashore in World War II’s most horrific battles of Peleliu and Okinawa.

Dad finally sputtered to consciousness. My voice was rising and cracking. “Dad! Dad!” “Are you okay?”

“Holy crap! Dad moaned. “How long have I been out?”

I thought, too long, Dad, too long . . . and now I knew why.

Dad gathered himself before speaking. “Son, lemme tell you a story. I started to, but got derailed. You need to hear some things, and it’s about time I get them off my chest.”

“What Dad?”

“War secrets, son. They’ve been pent up like raging demons all these years. I feel like I can talk to you about some things, and clear my heart, my mind, of it all. Bury it once and for all.”

And so, after we pulled over to get Dad a cup of coffee and some smokes and me a Coke and a 3 Musketeers candy bar, we rolled down the road in the heart of Mississippi as Dad broke his silence about his time in the war, telling me things so horrific I gasped every so often and said repeatedly, “Dad, no way!”

“Yes way, son,” Dad affirmed, eyes closed, gathering up the emotional wherewithall to continue. “They shipped my unit off to the Pacific Islands to join in an all-out assault to defeat the Japs. Mine was part of the first wave that landed in Okinawa on April 1, 1945.”

Dad went on to relate how enemy forces hiding out in hilltop fortified bunkers had let Dad’s first wave land ashore, then, Dad said with a flair for the dramatic, “The tricky bastards, they mowed down the next couple of waves, like shooting fish in a barrel.”

“No, way, Dad! What happened after that?”

Dad related how he and his men – “we were just kids, really, son” – had to seek cover in makeshift foxholes for three days until reinforcements could come to the rescue. “It wasn’t pretty, I kid you not about that, son. We were low on water and rations. We ate grubs and insects, we were living in shit and piss, and those nips . . .”

I stopped Dad for an explanation of this new word he was using for “Japs” and “gooks”. Dad’s use of terms I considered offensive highly disturbed me, but after listening to his experiences, I could halfway understand him using those derogatory terms.

“Yes, nips, short for Nippon, what they called their homeland. So, yes, we called ‘em nips and gooks. I know it’s not right or proper to refer to them as such nowadays, but we’re not talking about nowadays, son. We’re talking about those days.”

Here Dad paused for a long five seconds, not so much trying to remember incident details, but reliving it in his mind and body, seeing it again through a filtered lens of time. “They came down out of their bunkers looking to kill us. I had to bayonet more than one of those sonsabitches. Picture that – no, on second thought, don’t try, son.”

Dad explained how killing a man from a distance, with a gun, was awful enough, but having to do it up close and personal, with one’s bare hands, eye to eye, was infinitely more horrific.

“Son, we were never safe. By the time reinforcements arrived, the battle had turned real ugly, we were in a hell of flames, death and gore, yet by God's good grace, I somehow survived.”

I was amazed and saddened. “I had no idea you went through all this, Dad, all this anguish and fear, this terrible suffering.”

Dad said, “Well, you gotta know, because you won’t read about this in any history book, but war turns men into savages. War is a barbaric thing, and don’t you ever forget it. I hope you don’t have to ever experience the things I went through.” I wondered if Dad was thinking what I was: Thank God I was too young to fight in the current war raging today in a different Asian country.

Dad bared his soul like confessing to a priest and told me about gruesome, endless battles, deadly skirmishes, dangerous scouting missions, and a slew of atrocities and never-ending horrors. Dad said that the constant stress, fatigue and fear of being in a combat zone for weeks on end was too much to bear, that it turned a man’s brain to mush and hardened his soul. “Son,” he confided, “War makes a man do things he wouldn’t ordinarily do.”

“Like what, Dad?”

Dad was thinking better about sharing this part, I could tell. As I slightly veered into the on-coming lane, Dad said, “Keep your eyes on the road, son!” And then said, “Well, I’ve never told anybody this, nobody. We were out on patrol the night after a brutal skirmish where we killed maybe three-hundred nips and they got seventy-two of our men. I was leading a search party looking for some MIAs, two of my good buddies who we thought might still be alive out there and we wanted to get them before the nips did. But we didn’t make it in time.”

Dad broke off, tears formulating and voice cracking, before continuing. “We came upon their mutilated, naked bodies lying in feces and blood-spattered mud.” What he said next was too much to bear – that the marauding soldiers had severed their penises and shoved them in their mouths.

Dad hung his head, disturbed to be reliving the memory. “Son, I broke down. I was so angry and disgusted. I was full of vengeance, but what was I gonna do? What could I do?”
 
I barely managed to squeak out a trembling sentence, “Oh, that is the most terrible thing I’ve ever heard. So, what did you do, Dad?”

Dad paused to collect his thoughts, careful to describe his vile, unimaginable act in straight deliberate terms that shook me to my core. Dad confessed he went into a rage and found a half-alive Japanese soldier lying in the mud with his guts hanging out. He took out his knife and severed his testicles and then gouged out his eyeballs and stuffed the sockets with his bloody balls, finishing the job. The unspeakable atrocity turned my stomach in knots and wrenched my soul. I couldn’t believe that my own Father had done something so awful in the war. And, that he was telling me about it! But it certainly went a long way toward explaining a lot about Dad’s condition and mentality.

After a long pause, Dad went on. “Son, war changes a man, makes him do irrational things, just to get even, or have some sense of victory or superiority over the enemy, I don’t know, but I wasn’t done. I went over to another dead nip and busted out two of his gold teeth, and took his pistol, too. So, there you have it.”

I gulped and winced and gritted my teeth. “Geez, Dad, it’s so awful. I had no idea. I guess you were pretty lucky to have emerged unscathed.”

Dad croaked. “Unscathed! Hah! Son, I witnessed death and destruction beyond what any man should have to endure.”

Dad went on to lecture how war exacted more than physical loss. The psychiatric casualties were so awful that men committed suicide or went insane, “or became . . . like me, alcoholics or drug dependents. They called it ‘shell-shocked’ or ‘battle fatigue’ . . .”

“I’ve heard of that before, Dad. Were you shell-shocked?”

Dad affirmed that it was natural to experience battle fatigue. “But let me clue you in on something, boy” – Dad always called me “boy” when he had something of profound importance to say to me – “it goes beyond shell-shocked. It sticks with you for life, the trauma and stress of hardened combat. That’s why I am the way I am. You live through hell, it’s hard to escape. I’m trying to get well, but the VA considers it an untreatable disease, not the alcoholism but the shell-shocked condition that is a traumatic psychiatric disorder. Someday maybe they’ll figure it out, son.”

And so, now I was thinking during a lull in the conversation, I knew why all this time everyone figured Dad was the town drunk, which he was, I suppose, if you want to put a label on it, but really, and maybe some part of my little sixteen year old brain and heart was aware of truth, he was suffering from something much more severe and undiagnosed. Hell, yeah, my Dad’s drinking problem was not because he was a lousy no-good bum of an alcoholic, but because he was afflicted psychologically by the horrors of battle. Call it war neurosis or whatever, but Dad was not just a drunk. He was a war hero, by God! And that being a fact, I proudly told him so.

After hearing Dad’s horrific recollections of brutality and desecration, I figured by all rights (or wrongs) I should not be here driving this Hearsemobile to Mississippi, since half of Dad’s infantry unit perished in firefights and kamikaze attacks on Peleliu and Okinawa. Surviving that was enough to drive anyone to drink, I thought.

After a lengthy stretch of silence, Dad cleared his throat and announced he had one final thing to tell me. I was all ears and couldn’t imagine what could possibly top his stories up to now.

“Son, I’m going to clue you in on another little secret.”

I thought, Another Secret?! I had just been privvy to his deepest, darkest secrets, I was pretty certain. But apparently not, for Dad had one more startling admission.

“At the end of the war they stationed me in China before shipping me back to ‘Frisco, and during the time I was there . . .” Dad broke off leaving me hanging on his words.

“Yeah, what, Dad?'

“Well, no one but you and I know this now. This was before I met your mother. I had an affair with a young officer from Peking, and . . .”

“And what, Dad?”

“Well, dammit it all, I got her pregnant,” Dad confessed wistfully, but with a slight mischievous smile.

The words “stunned” and “shocked” might begin to describe my sensation of wonder and confusion that ripped through me as Dad’s revelation came to light and I began processing the implications. Was it a shameful secret or a taboo incident? I wasn’t sure.

“So, now you know, cat’s out of the bag. I got a war baby myself! I left China before she had the baby. She really wanted to come back to America with me, but she was caught between two worlds, two very different cultures and value systems, and though she claimed to love me, for whatever reason she chose to remain in China.”

“So you’re saying, Dad, that I have a 26 year old half- . . .”

“Half-sister, yes, son. After I got back, we corresponded for a year, now this is still before I met your mother, and I learned that the girl’s name is Li-Na.”

“Li-Na,” I repeated. “Dad, I can’t, uh, this is too mind-blowing! So I, we, my sisters and I, we have an older half-sister named Li-Na?”

Dad grinned. “Yep, her name means “Pretty Elegant”. How about that.”

“But, Dad, why haven’t you ever told us about this?”

“Because I couldn’t. How was I supposed to? What would your mother think? Well, anyway, when I sobered up, I started thinking, maybe it’s my only one true good memory from the war that I can recover and hang on to. How it just wasn’t right to have abandoned Li Xiu, her mom, so I tracked her down with the help of your mother’s Private Eye brother, Gizzepp – swore the bastard to secrecy – and found out that Li-Na lives in Wuhan and is married with two kids. Li Xiu mailed me a picture of her.”

“You mean you have the picture with you, Dad?”

Dad got out his wallet and rooted around in one of the compartments and pulled out a tiny crumpled photograph and held it up for me to see pinched between his elongated thumb and crooked forefinger. “Isn’t she - pretty elegant!” Dad said proudly.

Truly, she was, with her exotic Asian aspect and Dad’s All-American good looks. I asked excitedly, “Dad, do you think you will ever see Li-Na and her mom again?”

All Dad said was, “Mind you, keep this under wraps. This is our secret for now, got that.”

Dad then checked his watch and said. “We’re losing track of the time, son! We better pick up the pace. We’re due at Grimsby’s funeral home to pick up old man Waldrip’s body in two hours.”

We made it to Hattiesburg, located the funeral home, loaded old man Waldrip’s casket into the Hearsemobile, bid Mr. Grimsby adieu, and off we went on the fairly uneventful return journey home, an estimated thirty hours of driving.

By this time, our talk was exhausted, but I sensed that something had clicked in our relationship. It was all for the better, too, now that we had shared in so much together. All the stories unleashed from their cages, all the secrets released from Dad’s heart, had bonded us, finally, as Father and Son. A relationship restored, made whole, born from the confessions and sharing of the most buried of stories and secrets in a man’s soul.

Crossing the border into Indiana, Dad said, “This was a mighty fine adventure, don’t you think, son. Something to remember, I reckon. I know you fancy yourself a writer, and you’re pretty good at it. Maybe you can write up this story someday when I’m dead and buried.”

“I hope so, Dad, because there’s a lot to tell, and who’s gonna believe it anyway, unless I tell it.”

“Sure thing, son,” Dad said. Then one of his trademark tension-filled pauses that I had come to expect. “And just wait until our next trip I’ve got planned for us!”

My eyebrows raised. “Next trip? What are you talking about, Dad? This one’s not even over yet!”

“Well, son, take a guess.”

I drew a blank. “I dunno, Dad. What? I can’t imagine. Maybe visiting Uncle Gizzepp in Chicago to see a Cubs game? Yeah, that’d be real fun!”

Dad reached for his wallet, and pulled out that little picture he’d shown me earlier and held it up for me to see. “Son, when you turn 17 next year, for your high school graduation present, we’re going to China to meet Li-Na and her mom, Li Xiu.”