Dubay was six foot three without much fat and broad as a door. A memorable presence, but kind of a bummer being born a giant bulls eye, which probably explains his purple heart.  He was pretty lucky as door gunners go since they had a high mortality rate – 50% or more I think never making it back to “The World”, vertical.  I guess the scenic areas of the Central Highlands RVN were supposed to make up for the sometimes shortened one-way tour, but if you asked him he’d say, “AK tracer rounds, height, RPGs and clouds of rocket propellant dust made it hard to focus sometimes.” 

His luck became mine too as I eventually adopted him as my personal bodyguard on the acute psychiatric ward at the Albany VA Hospital.  We would sit together, backs to a center column big enough to hold the sky back holding the ward ceiling up, shoulder to shoulder, surrounded by a kaleidoscopic disarray of maniacs, catatonics, alcoholics, schizophrenics, addicts, and assorted personality disorders, supposedly to insure that “tranquility” was maintained, but all we guaranteed was that the column wouldn’t inexplicably fall down while we were there.  At least Dubay guaranteed it.  Like I said – he was solid.  Sometimes I would leave him to do mental status exams in Admissions, but typically we worked the same evening and night shifts and ignored the same SOPs.  On breaks we would go down to my car and smoke a couple Js.  They were big ones.  Ward staff said that from ten floors up it was still easy to see two big clouds of smoke billow up from my Volkswagen when the doors spilled us out.  That was some good shit too.  I was mellow even when the berserker addicts were hauled in by the LEOs, but not brain dead managing to evade PCP propelled punches, one of which actually bent an elevator door in once.  The guy was smiling too, kind of like the dog wagging it’s tail while biting you.  So, even if they’re smiling sidle over to their right side to take away their best shot as most guys are right-handed.  (This doesn’t work with dogs.)  Usually I didn’t have to dodge though, because I would do this “scissor” slide into their legs and Dubay would pounce on them when they fell to make easy the PRN IM Thorazine injection. Except when they were throwing chairs.  I digress.

Dubay was depressed.  Me too, but at least he was married with unlimited sex or so I thought never having been married myself.  You could watch him and almost hear the Rocka-Rocka-Rocka of the Huey blades swirling in his brain.  I don’t think we talked, except for, “Wanna do a doobie?” and sometimes, “What the fuck!”  After work,  we would sit in his living room quiet as the poncho covered grunts that lay silently heaped shoulder to shoulder on his inner blood splattered Huey floor.  Rocka-Rocka-Rocka,  like a steady tinnitus, drowned out his here-and-now receptive language skills pretty much, but his visual ones kept him on top of the early warning system people develop who have been shot.  His wife was always asleep, going to day school like she did.  I don’t think he was getting anything either.  He didn’t complain, because he never really came back to “The World” making me wonder who really were the crazies here?  I thought I was OK – that’s how crazy I was.

Dubay started to go to day school maybe to distract himself or watch the draft dodgers and flower people cavort in the wonderland we both knew didn’t really exist.  Who knows?  I’d already been there and had decided people who would try to jam State operated gun barrels with flowers didn’t have a fucking clue and so I guess did Dubay. He must have had a plan though and even the best ones go awry so his must have sucked big time, considering.  I had an inkling his plan wasn’t about school.  We both knew most of the offering was frog pebbles when it came to understanding the pond or maybe he shouldn’t have burned both ends of his candle.  That can make you nuts you know.

Anyway, I think he went nuts, ironically when he was half here, worrying about his wife and the “Jodie” threat (the guy who steals your girl when you’re away).  Dubay was mostly way, way, way away still flashing under the Rocka-Rocka-Rocka background noise and he knew it, but he also knew Jodies were plentiful having witnessed the ample Wailing Walls guys posted their “Dear Johns” on.  His wife was cavorting in “The World” surrounded by normal men, and he wasn’t quite normal anymore - Two plus two arithmetic - He worked that out.  There was no way to reinvent the calculation, not without amnesia. Shit happens.  End of story as Dubay went on to compute the advanced math of his world.

IE The SHIT Equation:

S (Suction on seat) = H (Height above ground) X I (Intensity you want to live) X T (Tracers coming your way)

So Dubay’s Intensity to live approached zero and there was no suction on his journey seat anymore as the mental tracers scored his brain ground level. He left the car at 60 mph when it stopped short against the power pole in front of their apartment building, I guess in an ill-formed plan to get her attention; a warped wheel turning a slow soft rocka-rocka-rocka sound, under the steam hissing from the mangled radiator in memory of his departure.  Nobody saw him leave.  I doubt she even woke up and missed him, living in the rear of the building like they did.

I missed him everyday thereafter even though he was never really here.

#AttentionEarthling