Charlie was a mystery. He didn’t actually live in the house next door, but he was there a lot. John once told me that the lady who owns the house and Charlie “got a thing going on.”
“Me…and…Mrs. Jones…,” He whistled through his missing teeth as he looked at me with a grin.
I knew Charlie was a veteran because he usually wore a cap from the Stand-Down, an annual event designed to help homeless veterans get off the street. Stand-Down was a place to get a haircut, get an ID issued, and find work and possibly even a place to live. Many veterans have been helped by this program, but too many others appear year after year, never able to keep it together for very long, looking only for a sandwich and an afternoon of hope.
Charlie didn’t fit the image of the troubled veteran, and I assumed that he volunteered to help out at the Stand-Down, as many veterans did. He was always well-kept, healthy, sharp and happy. He was tall and handsome, gregarious, and full of booming laughter. The residents next door seemed to love him, so it was great to find Charlie hanging around and lifting their spirits.
One evening some of the guys were sitting on the front porch next door. Mrs. Poole was in the slow process of wheeling herself in the front door, but stopped long enough to wave as I walked up.
“…’night, Mrs. Poole,” I said as she went through the door.
“Goodnight, Michael,” I heard from behind the big door as it slowly closed.
It was a sweet spring evening, and after exchanging greetings with everyone and some small talk with John, we all fell quiet and watched the cars alternate through the four-way stop in front of the house. Most had their headlamps on, others just parking lights. In the last bit of thin grey light still left in the day, the flowers in the yard looked almost real.
Charlie broke the silence.
“Did I ever tell y’all about the monkey I used to have?”
“MONKEY?” John asked, as if he’d misheard.
“Yep,” answered Charlie, “monkey.”
“Hell no, you haven’t told us about no damned monkey,” John replied, as if he didn’t believe it for a second.
“Hey, this is no bullshit,” Charlie said, feigning indignation.
“Ok, ok…” John surrendered, “Let’s hear it then.”
And Charlie started telling us about the monkey he once had, and all the things they used to do together, how much he enjoyed the monkey, and how he grew to love the monkey more than anything in the world. As Charlie talked, I could tell that John was becoming interested in the story. I’m sure he expected that the monkey would meet some horrible end, and seemed anxious to hear the gruesome details.
Charlie continued that he accidentally locked himself in the tool shed one time, and there was no one around who could hear him. It started getting dark, and he started to get a little scared being locked in that shed when he suddenly felt something on his back.
“It scared the daylights out of me. I jumped around, and you know what that was on my back?” Charlie asked us.
“That goddamn monkey,” John answered.
“The monkey, “Charlie continued as if he hadn’t heard, “and you know what?”
“What?”
“That monkey was alcohol, my brothers, and you better not let that monkey get on your back if you know what’s good for you” he finished with a stern look at each of us. A moment passed, and Charlie let out a roar of laughter as the rest of us realized that we’d been had.
“Son of a bitch,” John shot back, “I knew you were full of shit.” “Here I was all worried about the goddamn monkey,” he continued, “and the whole time you are giving us a goddamn A.A. lecture.”
Charlie was pleased with himself, and John had a laugh too. In the banter that followed Mr. Teeter asked, “What happened to the monkey?”
John leaned toward Mr. Teeter and lowered his voice a bit, “There was no monkey, Andy. That asshole Charlie is telling us a bunch of bullshit again.”
By that time it was too dark to see the expression on Mr. Teeter’s face, so I never knew if he got it or not, and I didn’t see Charlie again for a while after that. I didn’t see him again until Memorial Day.
My upstairs apartment in the house next door had virtually no insulation, so I could hear every car that passed and practically anything that happened outside, even with the volume turned up on the Aldo Ray movie I was watching.
I thought I heard something. I turned off the sound and listened. There was nothing. I turned the movie back up and heard it again. Volume down, I heard this time very clearly someone calling out my name from outside the house. I sometimes had friends get my attention upstairs that way, but this was different.
As I got up and went to the window, I guessed it was going to be someone from next door since there was a lot of drama over there. I was surprised to see Charlie shit-faced drunk and crying like a baby on the sidewalk out front.
“Can I come in, Mike,” he said in tears.
“Uh, sure Charlie…I’ll be right there,” and I went down the creaky stairs to the front door and let him in.
Once back upstairs, I got a good look at his face in the light. He appeared to have been crying for a long time tonight. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was puffy and streaked with tears.
“You need a beer?” I asked, although he’d obviously had plenty. He nodded, and I went to the kitchen. When I returned, he was sitting in the chair with his face in his hands, sobbing.
What’s the matter, Charlie?”
He didn’t respond.
I held the beer can out to him. He looked up and took the beer. He popped the top, took a swig, pulled out a handkerchief, and wiped his face. I thought he was ready to talk, but he didn’t say a word. I didn’t either. We sat for a long time in silence, interrupted only by the sound of the cars passing by and the progressively hollow clank of the beer can each time he set it on the table beside him.
He took a breath, and started to speak. He only managed a single word before he broke down again, covering his face with his hands and crying.
After two hours of false starts and beer, he calmed down enough to talk. When he started by saying “back in ‘Nam,” I got the sense that I was about to learn about the real monkey on his back.
He then told me the story.
His unit had been sent to check out a Vietnamese village. They didn’t expect any hostiles, and they didn’t find any. They found nothing out of the ordinary. There weren’t many men of fighting age, but there were elderly people, women going about their daily chores, and a bunch of kids around. The kids ran to meet the soldiers when they noticed the group coming through the village.
For Charlie, those bright faces were like an oasis in the desert; a bit of innocence in a world of filth, corruption and death. As the other soldiers walked on, he stopped and knelt down. Smiling, he put his hand out. Some smiled back at him, and a few cautiously extended a small hand and touched his.
Charlie had been carrying a brand new pack of chewing gum with him for days. He hadn’t opened it because he didn’t really like chewing gum all that much, but he liked having a little piece of home in his pocket.
None of the kids seemed to recognize the green wrapper. He thought some other soldiers might have previously come along and given these kids some chocolate or chewing gum, but he could tell by their faces that he was the first. He knew he would have to show them how.
He peeled off the end of the pack, and slid out a slim stick of gum. After counting the small dark heads, he went ahead and removed the remaining pieces.
He stripped each stick down to its foil wrapper, and split them so that each kid would have a portion. He took the small piece he’d kept for himself and held it up in front of the kids as he slowly peeled the foil away. With some coaxing and a little help, the kids followed suit. He put the gum in his mouth and started chewing. There was no need to coax the kids to do the same.
“I taught those kids how to chew gum,” Charlie said looking at the floor.
A moment passed, and his voice cracked as he muttered to himself, “Why did they do that?”
I was confused.
“Do what, Charlie?”
He then looked up from the floor and directly into my eyes. He seemed to have a moment of clarity, as though he just realized that he was sitting in my living room.
He stared at me, and to be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect from him next.
“They moved us up a hill the next day,” Charlie said in a low voice, “but we could still see that village a ways off in the distance.”
He heard jets, and looked upward. They saw the squadron in the distance, flying low as it came toward them. Some of the soldiers let out a whoop. They’d seen many times jets in this formation, flying low, on the way to napalm an enemy installation. The squadron roared past.
As the jets neared, Charlie worried that the loud noise might scare the kids. He watched as the jets passed over the village. A heartbeat later, a football-field length of earth exploded into flames, including the village and everything around it. The inferno billowed into the sky, engulfing the tops of trees, as Charlie watched, and in that moment, out of the sweating jungle, a monkey jumped on Charlie’s back. He keeps it on a leash most of the time. He keeps it in check. Only at certain times does it get the best of him, but he’ll never be rid of it. It will never leave.
