I come to bodies. I stop at each one, praying the dead I see are not dead. I check for a pulse, an eye blink, a whisper of breath. I pore over the dead, searching for the living.
Kneeling by a body, I reach for a pulse and my fingers sink to the bone, the Marine’s hand attached by only a frayed ligament. I search for further wounds and find a tiny, bloodless hole in his abdomen. I fall back, sit on the road, squint up at the sky. Lifeless. I close my eyes and picture the word, the letters—Life. Less. Less than life? What does that mean? What the hell does that mean?
We’re all dead, I think. Us. Them. All of us. The odor of death burning my nostrils, I look back at the dead Marine before me and I think, why?
What brings men to this?
* * *
Sometime later, the weeks melding into months, I corner my gunnery sergeant.
“Gunny,” I say, “I’m requesting a day off.”
He glares at me. Apparently, no one has ever before asked him for a day off.
“What?” he says.
“I need to go to Da Nang.”
“What for?”
“I want to take the LSAT.”
“The LS-what?”
“The LSAT. The exam to get into law school.”
“What the hell.”
“I know,” I say. I consider telling him about the promise I made to my father, look at his scowling face, think better of it.
“They give this test in Da Nang?” he says.
“Takes pretty much all day,” I say, then I laugh. “Law school, right?”
“What the hell,” Gunny says again, meaning no, moving away from me.
I wait him out. A few weeks later, I approach him after he’s downed several beers with his buddies at the NCO club.
“Sorry, to bother you, Gunny, but I was wondering about taking the LSAT? In Da Nang? Remember I told you about it—”
“The LSA Tee for law school,” Gunny says. “I remember.”
He starts to teeter, catches himself. He stares at me. He shows no recognition. He scrutinizes my face, trying to place me.
“Da Nang, right?” he says finally.
“Yes, sir. It’s actually in a few days—”
Gunny grunts. Calling over his shoulder, “What the hell,” this time meaning yes.
Gunny arranges for a Jeep and a driver who’s either a professional racecar driver or insane. He roars down dirt roads, accelerates onto the one asphalt road, a coastal highway, Highway 1, the Jeep fishtailing, swerving, at one point barely missing a farmer leading a yoked water buffalo. Riding shotgun, I cling to my door, occasionally glancing over my shoulder at the other member of our party, a machine gunner standing in the back of the Jeep, manning a M60 that protrudes from the back like a steel snout. Eventually, in a cloud of dust, we arrive at Da Nang, a resort town—soldiers, sailors, civilians clustered around stalls selling food, clothing, cookware, and beauty supplies. The driver parks the Jeep and I go in search of the testing site. After several failed tries, I find it, a tent not far from a string of bars. I walk in and the test administrator greets me with a knowing nod. He seems to be expecting me. He brings me to my assigned spot, a small card table. I unholster my .45 pistol, place it on the table, sit down, and begin taking the test. After completing the first page of questions, I know I will pass. I’ve studied the LSAT Guide some, preferring to lose myself in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, but I feel in control of these questions and answers. I’m doing well, I think as I fly through the test. It’s as though I can see my future, my destiny, my promise to my dad. It turns out I will always know how I will do on law school exams, a function not of clairvoyance, but of excessive preparation. The lesson here, is simply—be prepared, the Boy Scouts’ wise and timeless motto.
I hand the administrator my finished test, grab my pistol, duck out of the tent, and get back in the Jeep. Weeks later, I receive the results. As I expected, I’ve aced the LSAT.
I now humbly offer this advice to anyone deciding to take the LSAT. Study, sleep the night before, and bring a pistol. Worked for me.
4 The Start-Up
1969
BACK IN THE WORLD.
That’s what we call our return.
Few of us call it coming home.
We depart for Vietnam as one person and come back another. Many of us are unrecognizable even to ourselves.
We’ve changed—emotionally, spiritually, physically. We return with broken bodies, smashed spirits, shattered hearts, confused minds. We escape the battlefields of Vietnam, eluding the horror and chaos, only to land in new, unfamiliar chaos, an internal war—back in the world—a world we thought we knew.
For me, to be honest, the military worked. If you could remove the tragedy of war—of course you can’t; but if you could—what remains is a gift. The military changed my life, for the better. I learned discipline, responsibility, and self-confidence. Some of this the military literally drills into you. I left Kentucky a married boy stumbling through life, lacking focus and any real conviction, but having made a promise. I have a goal, vowed to keep my promise, but I don’t have an actual plan. I come back into the world a married man with relentless focus. I feel as if I’m walking through life with a sandstone draped around my neck, a stone of ambition. I am driven, motivated, impatient, uncertain, and scared. In other words, I have matured.
Fear drives me. I fear that I will fail to make a living, that I will struggle to find my place in the “real world,” and most of all, that I will disappoint my parents, especially my father. And I fear that I won’t keep my promise. That fear drives me most of all.
My parents have aged. My mother moves slower and seems quieter, her faced furrowed with lines caused by worry. It’s not my going to Vietnam that has done her in, I realize. It’s the waiting, the daily terror of receiving another telegram, this one about her son, about me. My father, always a recalcitrant man, appears subdued, bordering on distant. A lifetime smoker and drinker, he has become even quieter and smokes and drinks even more. This is how he dulls his pain, by chain-smoking, sipping from his shot glass or beer bottle, shutting himself off from his own terrors, his own memories.
So, motivated by fear, I enter the Louis D. Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville determined to fulfill the promise I made to my father. I leave nothing to chance. I absolutely attack my courses. I become a warrior in the classroom and a fiend in the library. Some nights I close the place, along with the janitor. I don’t want to succeed. I want to excel. I achieved outstanding grades in high school, followed that by tanking in college, setting records for futility, except for becoming a standout at every party, now, I see, a dubious distinction. I declare myself retired from that life. Back in the world, I’m a different person. I am a law student, a married man, and I will become a lawyer.
In 1971, I finished law school near the top of my class and was named associate editor of the Law Review. I pass the Kentucky bar and receive a job offer with the Honors Program of the Office of Chief Counsel, Internal Revenue Service, a jaw-breaking title that means I’ll be moving to Washington, D.C., as a lawyer for the IRS. My mother cries when I tell her, my father nods stoically, which I interpret as a gesture of pride, or perhaps relief. Stephanie and I pack all of