“Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin boarding American Airlines Flight 2411 nonstop from Dallas-Fort Worth to Los Angeles International.  At this time, we’d like to invite our first-class section passengers and our AAdvantage Gold and Platinum members to board the aircraft.”

I slung my black shoulder bag over my arm and wheeled my carry-on suitcase past the smiling gate attendant, down the narrow jet bridge, and onto the silver Boeing 737 aircraft.  Stowing my roller bag in the overhead, I slid into Seat 3A and fastened my seat belt.   Outside the little Plexiglas window, the tarmac was abuzz with burly men in coveralls and orange-and-yellow safety vests loading luggage and tending to last-minute tasks.

Turning my head to the aisle, I saw my seatmate stow his carry-on next to mine in the overhead and close the door.  He was tall, even after removing his gray felt Resistol cattleman’s hat.  A precisely-trimmed white beard framed a face tanned, worn, and leathery from years in the outdoors.  His creased visage hinted at tales of tribulation and conflict.  He wore a gray tailored Western-cut suit, white shirt with pearl snap fasteners, and a black bolo string tie with a silver clasp. 

A big, beefy hand appeared a few inches from my face.  “Good to see you.  I’m Harley.  Harley Maddox.”  The words were spoken slowly, deliberately, the accent redolent of oil rigs and tumbleweed.

I returned his firm grip and his smile.  “Mike Hudson.  How ya doin’?”

“With that accent, Mike, I’m guessin’ you’re not from around these parts, now, are you?”

“Perceptive, Harley.”  I laughed.  “No, I’m from the Big Apple.  Just changed planes in Dallas.”

Harley eased his big frame into the seat and fumbled with the seat belt.  I slipped a paperback out of my shoulder bag and placed it in my lap, and put the bag under the seat in front of me.

“So, Mike, where’re you headed today?”

“I’m visiting my son.  He lives in Camarillo, out near Ventura.  How about you?”

“I’m headed to Vietnam.”

“Really?  What brings you out there, business?”

“No, I guess you could say it’s a kind of a homecoming of sorts.  First time I went was forty years ago this month, courtesy of my Uncle Sam and the Big Green Machine.”

“You fought over there?”

“Yes, sir.  First Squadron, Ninth Cavalry, First Cavalry Division.  Served in ’69 and ’70.  You?”

The plane raced down the runway.  It lifted off the pavement.  I shifted a little in my seat.

“Ah, no.  No, I didn’t.  Uh, my draft number, you know, my lottery number, was, uh, like 314, My draft board didn’t go higher than 175.  I guess we had a lot of kids in my area that volunteered to serve, so, you know, they didn’t have to draft too deep.”

Harley paused for a minute.  “Did you consider enlisting?”

I glanced out the window as the Texas lakes and pastures faded beneath the cloud layer.

“No, Harley.  I didn’t.  I was in college at the time.  Columbia,” I added lamely.

“Columbia, huh?”  I swear the 737 climbed ten thousand feet in the time it took him to roll those five syllables off his tongue with barely concealed contempt.  “Were you one of them SDS fellers that took over the campus buildings back then?”

The Students for a Democratic Society was a radical left-wing group of the era.  The Columbia SDS chairman, Mark Rudd, led a student takeover of the Low Library and Hamilton Hall in April of 1968 that led to a string of violent confrontations with campus security and then the New York Police Department.  “No, I was never part of that crowd.  But I did protest the war.”

The plane leveled off and the flight attendant brought the beverage cart down the aisle.  Harley asked for a Pepsi, I for a bottle of water.  Our conversation hung in the air like flatulence.

Finally, Harley turned in his seat and faced me.  “Tell me, man.  Did you ever feel regret over not standing by your country during a time of war?  Did it ever bother you to demonstrate against fellow Americans giving their lives for you over there?”

I thought a while.  I almost opened the book in my lap to forestall further conversation, but decided not to.  The man asked me a question and he deserved an answer.  Not to respond would be cowardly, and this fellow probably figured me for a coward already.  If not worse.

“Do I regret protesting the war?  To the extent that soldiers serving over there like yourself felt betrayed by our actions, yes, I do have a measure of regret for that.  That was never my intention.  I always believed that what I did was done in support of the troops, not against them.”

“How do you figure that?” he interrupted.  “Didn’t you ever stop and think that your protests encouraged the enemy, that made him believe that if he just kept on fighting long enough, America would quit fighting and he would win?  Which, of course, in hindsight, he did?”

I softened my tone.  “Yes, that bothers me.  I love my country as much as anyone and I hated the way we looked in ’75 when we pulled out of Vietnam.  But you know what I hated worse?”

“What’s that?”

“I hated the fact that we lost over 50,000 of my fellow countrymen, your fellow servicemen, in a fight we never should have been involved in.  We were supposed to be defending South Asia from Communist tyranny, and that if the North conquered the South, the rest of the countries in the area would fall like dominoes.  Which, of course, in hindsight, didn’t happen, did it?”

Now it was Harley’s turn to ratchet down the tension level, and he did.  “Well, you’ve got a good point there.  I never thought, back in 1975, I’d ever be able to visit the country again.  Not that I thought I’d ever want to go back.”  A shadow passed across his face, then vanished.  “Tell me something, Mike—and tell me true.”

“Sure, Harley.  What?”

“Did you protest against the boys when they came back to The World?  Did you spit on them?  Did you call them baby killers?”

“Hell, no!  Harley, my quarrel wasn’t with guys like you.  My beef was with the people that sent you there, that played with American lives as if they were poker chips, shoveling more and more of them out in a bluff on a busted straight.  You can’t hold the actions of an insane few protesters who spit on the guys coming back and called them war criminals against everyone.  Most of the people who opposed the war supported the men who were in-country.  We took on the politicians.”

“Well, Mike, let me tell you—there was a lot more resentment shown to us veterans than just a few assholes in the airport.  Maybe you never saw it or did it, but there were a lot of people on campuses and in businesses who treated veterans like we were all psychos or lepers or something.  I saw it myself on a number of occasions, and it wasn’t pretty.”

I thought about that for quite a while.  I decided I didn’t really have an answer.  “Harley, to the extent that that sort of thing happened, to you or to any veteran, well, it’s unconscionable and unforgivable.  And even though I never felt that way, I’d like to extend an apology to you.”

We shook hands and were both quiet for a bit.  At last, Harley spoke up again.

“You know, this trip for me is to bury some ghosts and finally put the past behind me.  And Mike, I think you’ve helped me get a real good start here.”

© 2009, Kenneth M. Rhodes

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