It’s lonely here, even with all these guys. We know one another but not too deeply. Another superstition. “You don’t make friends,” Cruz told me on another night. “We ain’t friends, Shutter. You understand? I don’t have any friends in the Nam. I don’t make any friends in the Nam. Most guys aren’t here long enough to care about anyway. They rotate out, their DEROS comes up, or they get flown out in a body bag. That’s Nam. It’s easier to say goodbye when you aren’t friends.”
Chapter 11
July 9, 1979
My mother worked late, taking a seminar, something she called continuing education. The oldest at home this year, I cared for my younger siblings, as my older siblings had cared for me. After cooking and putting out a meal, I cleaned the kitchen and took a shower. My mother arrived home, and with everything in order, I told her I was headed out.
“Don’t be late.”
“Never,” I said.
She gave me the look—she wasn’t buying it. I smiled. “I won’t be late. I got work in the morning.”
Mif picked me up in a yellow Volkswagen bug. “Whose car?” I asked, sliding into the passenger seat.
“My sister’s. My brother’s home from school and has the other car.”
In my house, when siblings came home, the available car often went to the oldest. The same rule applied in Mif’s house.
“Where’s Billy and Cap?”
“Billy’s got baseball. Cap is going to meet us at Ignatti’s.”
Mike Ignatti, a junior, had a basement with a pool table and a pinball machine. His father was deaf in one ear. Ignatti said his dad put his good ear to the pillow and couldn’t hear anything in the basement. That meant playing music and drinking beer while shooting pool, playing pinball, and throwing darts. It made me uncomfortable, drinking beer in someone’s house, knowing their parents were home, but it didn’t stop me.
I could only recall drinking beer with friends one time in my parents’ home. My dad had walked into the family room and handed me, Mif, and Cap one can of Coors each as we debated what to do with our night. It was a small act, but it meant something to my dad, and it meant something to me. A man of few words when it came to these things, my father was no dummy. He knew I drank. He knew my older brother drank. Handing me a beer in front of my friends was his way of telling me he no longer thought of me as a child, but also that he would hold me to a higher standard and expect me to live up to that standard.
When Mif and I drove up to Ignatti’s house, Cap stood out front like a thief scoping out a burglary. He bent down to speak in the driver’s-side window.
“Ignatti’s mother won’t let him have friends over. His sister came home from college and they’re having a family dinner.”
“What do you want to do?” Mif said.
“I don’t know.” Cap walked around to the passenger side of the car. “Vinny B., get in back.”
“I’m not getting in back. You get in back.”
“Come on, I can’t fit in the back.”
“Too bad. I’m not getting in the back.”
“Fine, then let me in.”
I knew what was going to happen. We all knew what was going to happen. The minute I got out, Cap forced his way into the front seat, laughing. I didn’t have a chance in a power struggle. He stepped out and pulled the seat forward and I sat in the back.
“What about the drive-in?” Mif asked.
I didn’t want to go to the drive-in. The memory of Ed singing Padre fight songs and the ridiculous melee it caused remained fresh. We threw out and rejected three or four more options before Cap said, “My Brother’s Place?”
We had stumbled onto the hole-in-the-wall bar on El Camino Real in Millbrae on a Friday night earlier that summer, after my one and only dine and dash at a Denny’s restaurant. Todd paid us every Friday, cash under the table, and while most of what I earned went into the bank to help pay my future tuition, I had enough that night to pay my portion of the bill, but not the entire amount. I had no choice but to run, along with my friends.
I never told my friends, but my conscience got the better of me, and I went back to that Denny’s the next day with more money. I told the manager, who wasn’t much older than me, that I’d been in the restaurant the night before and that my friends and I had forgotten to pay the bill.
“You what?” The manager wore his hair parted in the middle and had fuzz over his upper lip that would never pass for a mustache. He looked and sounded like I was speaking a foreign language.