Nuvein Magazine

Dago Eyes
by John P. Matsis

I never had a belly ache before Vietnam.

It feels like I chugged a pint of syrup-sweet muscatel that’s been sitting in my back pocket all day and was struck by a sheet of heat lightning. It makes my breath hot, wet, and my face heavy with words that drip down like a mumbling prayer.

I didn’t force Frankie to come. But when all your life you’ve been as brothers, it’s like your minds are one. It’s like you were born from the same womb, but weren’t, like we look alike, but we don’t, like we have the same last name, but don’t. It didn’t matter; we were still brothers.

We were brothers that lived in different houses. Houses that hugged close, houses separated by make-believe walls which allowed our feelings to mix together like we shared the same eating table, the same bedroom, the same john.

And I was able to hear Frankie’s mother hollering real mean, just for the sake of letting him know she was the boss.

And my Pa, his mind mixed up, pounded the wall, raised his voice with
shit-words, and told me that dago next door ain’t my brother. But it made no difference.

We never had the clap before Vietnam.

We never felt piss burn so hot that our eyelids melted shut and wouldn’t open, and the piss turned into a thick yellow pus which wouldn’t fall off your dick unless you shook the hell out of it.

And we saw that smirk on medic Murphy’s face as he stuck a syringe-full of penicillin into our butts—real slow, so as he sucked back on the plunger the flesh gathered up. And he paused to hear our teeth grind.

We never smoked joints before.

Now we puff everyday. We roll them long and lean with just enough weed so the wrap comes together twice. We pinch the ends tight with yolk spit and breathe deeply to make sure it goes down our windpipes and coats the pain like a soothing powder.

Sometimes it does, other times, it doesn’t.

We never breathed in shit before.

Now shit-air sucks through us; it draws in the stink so you can’t tell if it’s the smell of man or beast. And you start believing that you’re not human, that you’re either half-alive or half-dead.

And when all else fails, we think of home. We think back. And Frankie remembers his mother getting angry, just to be angry. And he sees her mouth open wide, letting out the smell of lunch to be. Sometimes he smells the aroma of a red sweet wine she usually saves for a special occasion.

And here in Nam, the air isn’t much different than steel-town USA, Gary Indiana. A city born to erupt smoke clouds day and night, to drizzle red-brown iron dust instead of rain, and to break the occasional stillness with thunder claps of distress—whenever someone gets hurt or killed in the battleground of the steel mills.

But it’s all we knew, Frankie and me. We were born there and believed we’d die there—until Vietnam

I remember how it happened.

Some days the smoky wisps spiraled from Stack Two. Then, on other days, from One or Three, but never all at the same time. Depending on the direction of the wind, the smoke either rose straight up, nearly touching a hazy orange sky, or broke apart to follow the interstate south.

And Frankie and I would sit high on a concrete retaining wall overlooking the on-ramp, our limbs limp as rag puppets without strings. We surveyed the interstate below, counted the Peterbilt and Dodge Bighorns eighteen- wheelers belching black diesel smoke. And as the truckers drove by, some honked at us, others gave us the finger, but most ignored us like we were part of the graffiti that embellish every overpass.

I remember that day. I looked up at the smoke-clouds, squinted
so they formed make-believe creatures, and talked with Frankie about things. We talked almost the whole day, our breathing slow, not fast like the onrushing traffic. I had a stem of Foxtail Barley, freshly stripped, between my front teeth. Frankie chewed on Milkweed stems so he could spit milk.

“Do you ever think ahead, Frankie? You know, when is school is done.”

“Sometimes. But thinking makes my head hurt. And besides, Pa already talked to foreman Angelo at the mill. I’m all set when the time comes. He promised Pa I’d be an apprentice at the South open-hearth.”

“I ain’t working there, Frankie. I’ve made up my mind. Screw the mill.
I’m joining up right after graduation.”

I heard Frankie sigh, a deep kind of sigh when things bother him a lot. Frankie liked things simple, uncomplicated—a lunch bag with a baloney sandwich and a fistful of Oreo cookies. If he worked in the mill, it would be the same thing his whole life: baloney sandwich and Oreo cookies.

I told him I can’t let him do it. And deep down he knew that. We’re like brothers and brothers stick together. So I conned him into my way of thinking. I made sure he felt the same way. I told him things that would change his mind. I told him Vietnam was full of Milkweeds and he wouldn’t have to comb iron dust out of our hair and he could sleep in late when he wanted to and Oreo cookies were free.

I told him we had to sign up for the Airborne.

So we walked together, step by step to the recruiting station, oblivious of the passersby and the “red-no-walk” sign at the intersection of Broadway and Washington. And we didn’t feel the ninety-five degree July heat that made the asphalt blister and the telephone line sag with wilting sparrows. And we never felt more like brothers than at that moment.

Now we are in Vietnam. I was wrong; the air is different. It teases your senses, it arouses your suspicion, it lets your mind run wild with thoughts. And they tell you the enemy isn’t human, but an animal put into a human body, frail, thin with a parchment face, and a voice that chirps in the night.

And the smell: the stink of rotting leaves too wet to decay, of Reed Grass bent down by slugs, and worst of all, the smell of salt bubbling out of flesh waiting for the wild dogs to lick.

Even the wind is different. It isn’t calm, but more like a flapping blackbird gone crazy, the breeze not knowing if it should blow higher or settle down on the nearest branch. And when the sun struggles, that’s when it really acts up. It blows burst Sow-Thistle pods past trees like they have holes in them; and when your mouth gapes wide, the thistles whistle into your lung and makes the phlegm stick like solid pus.

We were reborn in Nam, but wished we weren’t. We were first born spic and dago kids, kids who played Lone Ranger and Tonto after school, kids who secretly held hands when jay-walking across Jackson street. We had forgotten our last names; we only knew we were brothers that had to sleep in different houses come nighttime.

Now we’re a serial number without a real name, unless you call “fucking spic” or “ fucking dago” a real name.
They don’t want you to think, yet remember. But we think and remember. We talk to each other with our mouths barely open, like eels with teeth. We talk about the time that Frankie’s mama wanted him to be a priest, like Father Peter, and not to work in the mill like his Pa or mine. I think that Frankie thought seriously about at first. He would have been a good priest. He had the right kind of eyes, dark and cave-deep, and a crackly, soap-bubble voice, and cupid lips that wouldn’t make a baby cry.

You see I love Frankie more than my brother Emmanuel, or my sister Maria.

You can love someone too much. You can love them to such a degree that you can’t tell love from shame. A shame when it happens. When the Vietcong test you and make you decide if your love is real. When the world lights up like fireflies taking over, and when the swamp gas explodes like flashbulbs going off nonstop and blinds you so you can’t tell the sky from the ground.

And I pray.

I pray it isn’t Frankie. I do the sign of the cross and suck in air till I get dizzy, but the feeling doesn’t go away. A feeling that crawls on your skin when you know things aren’t right, and a shame when your legs run instead standing still. And a clenched mouth when your trigger-finger sticks bent, and won’t let go. And you pray to see Frankie, to hear his voice.

And the moonless night swirls forth, steals the orange of the sun and brings chill where it doesn’t belong. And it happens so quickly. It’s always so quick, as if you slipped into quicksand that shouldn’t be there and your only chance—pretend you’re dead, ignore the wet creeping down your thighs and the sour rising up from undigested food. And ignore the twitching of your hand and hope your eyes don’t glow green like an animal’s.

Sudden.

Heads jerk to Lieutenant Cox’s barking. He shouts words from the back of his throat—cuss words that make you puke but glad he is saying them: set up the fucking M-79 grenade launcher, Manelli, and you, Cody T., get your M-60 to the left flank. And you fucking dago to the right flank. And you fucking spic stay in the middle and cover everyone’s ass.

Everything is fuck. Fucking fast. Fucking loud. Fucking crazy.

Just unload. Unload two rounds straight ahead, then right, then left, and unload just to unload.

Then smell. Smell the ground. Smell those who were here before you. Try not to breathe in, only out.

“I’m okay, Frankie. The smoke is shit-thick, but I can see you. I can almost touch you.

Cody T., can you hear me? I can see you almost as clear as Frankie. Shit! Damn you, Cody T., stop looking at me that way, like you’re dead. Stop looking at me with those fucking eyes.”

Always fucking eyes. Eyes that are quick frozen so all the pain is preserved. Eyes that ask, why me? And me, hoping it isn’t Frankie’s or my eyes’ asking.

“Frankie, do you want a joint? Talk to me you dago…open your mouth…touch my hand…call me, spic. I won’t care.

Medic!

Frankie needs you. I think he’s bleeding inside; his gut is drum-tight and his face is white like he ain’t a dago, maybe he’s Irish.

Hang on, Frankie. Just keeping listening to me. Do you remember before we signed up?

Do you remember when we sat on the front porch, your mama and my pa already asleep? When the Bessemer converters blew their tops at the mill at

eleven o’clock sharp, and lit up the south shoreline like it was high noon and sent a tongue of fire through the red-iron clouds like a fist of lightning. And the converters spewed and spit sparks everywhere like it was Fourth of July every night. And we had a feeling the world was ablaze and there was nothing we could do about it.

And one night on that same porch, your mama pretended she was asleep, but caught us smoking unfiltered Camels. It was my fault; it was my coughing that alerted her-- when I pretended that I was inhaling, but wasn’t. And she smacked you real good with her leather slipper. And me, turning chicken, ran away like a-bat-out-of-hell. I should have stayed and let her smack me too.

Frankie, I can feel your heart pounding, fast, like it’s in a hurry to get somewhere.

Our hearts always pounded together.
Do you remember that mid January morning, it snowed about a foot overnight and the mill dust covered the snow with an orange-rust topping? And we walked to school, one behind the other, making certain there was only one set of footprints, like in the movies. And the cold wind squeezed our lungs like a python and made our hearts pound.

God I love you, Frankie. If you were a girl, I’d marry you.

Hang on, Frankie, medic Murphy is coming; I can hear him. I can almost see him through the damn smoke.

Stop faking around, Frankie. Breathe in. You’re always faking about something; you’re always trying to scare me. And stop holding your breath, it ain’t healthy. I can hold mine longer anyway. Do you remember that time at Miller Beach near the concession stand where you always paused for a Coke and a chocolate Dixie Cup, even though your mama always warned you not to eat or drink before swimming? And we had this contest: who could hold their breath the longest underwater. And we looked at each other under the chopping waves and our faces turned blue and you floated up to the surface as if you were dead. And I hollered and told you to stop faking.

So, stop faking! Stop looking at me with those dago eyes!