Captain Mouse and the Big Jungle Rumble

By Devin Marcus

 

My father loved to tell stories. When I was a child, my sister and I would bug him every Saturday night for the next installation of the ongoing adventures of Captain Mouse, the world’s tiniest superhero. Captain Mouse was a friend to all animals, even cats, and travelled all across the world to meet other animal superheroes and save them from traps laid out by palm-rubbing villains. Everywhere he went, he always made new friends, and his catchphrase was, “We can do it together!” Somehow, Dad always had a new half-hour installment ready to go, and he always had Captain Mouse come home to eat cookies with his two best friends, Alex and Teresa. This was a signal for us to jump on the bed and start tickling him, officially ending the storytelling session.

But there was always one night’s story that stuck with me into adulthood. Dad just sounded off the whole time, on the verge of tears even. It was about Captain Mouse’s trip to the jungle, what jungle and where he didn’t specify. In this jungle, Captain Mouse meets a fish who plots to hurt Captain Mouse and one of his friends. The fish takes Captain Mouse’s friend into the jungle and comes back alone, which makes Captain Mouse immediately suspicious. Captain Mouse tells his other friend, Cathy the Cat, but she doesn’t believe him. The story ends with Captain Mouse looking behind a rock in the jungle and finding his friend, and it turns out that the fish was just misunderstood all along. They laugh it off and Captain Mouse heads home with a new friend. When the story was over, there were no tickles, no cookies. Dad just whispered, “Good night, Alex. Good night, Teresa” and closed the door behind him, leaving us to gossip to each other about how the story should have ended. The next week, the fish was gone from the story and Dad never made mention of him or the jungle again.

I learned from Mom that Dad fought in Vietnam a few years later. It didn’t come as too much of a surprise to us; we were learning about it in history class at the time. Talking it out, Teresa and I figured that the jungle story, which we both still remembered, had something to do with his Vietnam experience. Teresa repeatedly asked Dad to tell us what happened in Vietnam, but he always shook his head and took another drink. Captain Mouse ended not long after we started pestering him.

#

“Defender of the weak,

Speaker for the meek,

Captain Mouse! He'll save them all,

If they’re big or if they’re small.

Captain Mouse! With all his friends

Your favorite story now begins!”

#

Captain Mouse’s message and eternal, anthropomorphic optimism got me through some tough times at school, where I was bullied for being “too much of a sissy” pretty much daily. I was outed by everybody but myself through high school, which in 1994 was a social death sentence. Teresa was always there to back me up, which I thanked her for profusely. The problem was, I thanked her from about as far back from the front lines as I possibly could.

“Alex, I love you, but you’re going to have to stand up for yourself eventually,” she’d say as Dad drove us back from school. In the background, the talk show hosts were opining on and on about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that had just been instated. The radio station Dad tuned in to was of the opinion that gays would weaken the military and cause dissention amongst the troops. “Why can’t they just stay in their theater productions of ‘Grease’? That’s as close to real combat as they should be getting,” reasoned the host, to thunderous laughter and applause. “I’m not going to be your bodyguard forever, you know.”

“Yeah, all right, next time,” I whined. I think I almost believed it myself. In the front seat, Dad grunted impatiently and said nothing.

My Dad was never hostile to the whole Gay Rights thing exactly, but he was, I would say, hesitant. Looking back, I think he was forced to be at least civil by my inexorable descent into rainbows and glitter. Mom was never anything but accepting, but Dad always seemed nervous about the whole thing somehow. Whenever news of a protest or a stand-in showed up on our little radio, Dad’s eyebrows would furrow and he would listen intently, like a dog on watch for a housebreaker. “I hope they keep calm and keep things peaceful over there,” he’d say. “Anger is not the answer here.”

I came out to them the day before I flew out to UCLA for college. Teresa had known for years, of course; she actually flat out told me that I was gay because she was tired of me dancing around the subject. It wasn’t so much coming out of the closet as someone flicking the light switch on so I could see the closet around me. She was off to study pre-law at Harvard, which meant that I was going to be on my own for the first time in my entire life. I decided to tepidly reach out to my parents in her wake.

Mom was thrilled to finally acknowledge the gay elephant in the room, and she did the standard good parent thing of assuring me that she would always love me and smothering me with kisses, which was exactly what I needed at the time. When she stepped back, she looked over at Dad and said, saccharine implications oozing off every word, “Mitch, honey? Would you like to say something to Alex?”

Dad had been sitting back with his hands on his thighs and his knees half-clenched, the eternal position of someone who wishes they were somewhere else. Behind him, the radio droned about conflicts in Kuwait and oil prices. When he stood up and walked over to me, I felt something in my soul shrivel and die. I was certain he would hoist me up and throw me out the window or something. But he didn’t.

“Alex, I think I speak for both of us when I say that we’ve known for quite some time. I want you to know that this doesn’t change anything. You’re still my son and I’m still your dad, and I still love you.” He swiped a tear from his eye, and I did the same. “Now that you’re off to college, you’re your own man now, and you’re going to have to know who you are and what you want, and you’re going to have to be willing to stand up for it.” He put a burly, hairy hand on my shoulder. “Remember what Captain Mouse said, Alex. ‘We can do it together.’”

#

“It’s time for the weekly adventures of Captain Mouse! Yes, our daring rodent hero is back from his strange adventure with Sammy the Seal at the bottom of the sea, where he discovered Atlantis and the wonders of Atlantean cheese! Yum! Captain Mouse remembered that his best friends Teresa and Alex loved cheese, so he brought them some and they ate it together. Deee-licious!

“After they finished eating the cheese, Captain Mouse’s squeakphone began squeaking. He picked it up and heard Cathy the Cat on the other end. ‘Captain Mouse, there’s a rumble in the jungle. Come over here right meow; Danny the Dog is in trouble!’

“’Danny in trouble? Sorry, Teresa and Alex. Danny needs me in the jungle. I’ll tell you all about it when I come back!’ And with that, Captain Mouse jumped on Paul the Pigeon’s back and flew all the way to the jungle, across the sea, where Cathy and Danny were waiting for him.”

#

When I got to UCLA, I learned two very important lessons.

First, I realized that there were way more gay people than I ever thought possible there, compiled into a very tight space. There was even a Gay Rights Club, something I never would have dreamed of back home. When I tentatively announced to my roommate that I was gay (crossing my fingers in my mind that this wouldn’t be a dealbreaker), he laughed and said, “Wow! My boyfriend told me the exact same thing!”

His name was Wendell Knight, and he was from south Los Angeles. He’d been to every L.A. Gay Rights parade and protest since 1995, and he served as my social lifeline in those early days. All of the friends I have to this day, even my husband of seven years, I met through Wendell and his seemingly bottomless capacity for friendship. In a way, he reminded me of Captain Mouse, which I think is what made the transition so easy for me. I’ll admit to maybe having a tiny crush on him, too.

It was at his repeated urging that I joined the Pink Menace, UCLA’s very own pocket protest group. It was nothing like back home, where queer kids met up in closed up classrooms and prayed nobody came in. The Pink Menace was in your face, out and proud, and more than a bit corny. Everyone’s hearts were in the right place, but, I mean, we were still kids, with lots of learning to do. To a young gay man seeing openly gay people in person for the first time, everything they did was bleeding edge.

Their favorite topic, for which they organized weekly meetups and beat poetry readings, was gay rights. The base of operations was the on-campus game room. The coffee was poor, and the pastries were cafeteria-provided, but the place was buzzing. I went every week baring new soul-achingly bad poetry to read, stuff about unloving parents and flowers blooming. At first only Wendell snapped applause, but with every reading I did, more and more guys would congregate around the little podium and chat with me afterwards about how shitty parents are, how they don’t understand. I felt like I was living a lie, out of one closet and into another. My parents loved me! And I was gay! In the world of UCLA I’d invented around myself, this was an impossibility, or worse: boring. I wanted to prove to someone, whoever might care, that I was a for-real gay rights activist. So, I went to the first and last protest march of my life, where I learned my second important lesson; how frighteningly easy it is to hurt people.

#

“When he got to the jungle, Captain Mouse saw that it was very, very hot and very, very wet. It felt like hot rain on his fur every moment. He saw Cathy waiting for him over by the edge of the trees, so he walked over and greeted her with a hug. ‘Hello, Cathy!’ he squeaked.

“’Hello, Captain Mouse,’ she purred, big paws draped over his shoulder in a welcoming embrace. ‘I’m sorry to have called you away from Alex and Teresa at such short notice, but there’s an adventure here waiting for you. Freddy the Fish took Danny out into the jungle with him to go looking for leaves, but only Freddy came back. I’m worried.’ Cathy stroked her whiskers and frowned. ‘Freddy is over there by that big rock.’

“’Thanks, Cathy! I’ll go bring Danny back and get to the bottom of this mystery!’ With a smile and a jump, Captain Mouse ran off, into the jungle, where Danny was waiting for him. Freddy watched him go from his rock.”

#

The march was scheduled to take place on a Saturday, to avoid conflicting with anybody’s classes.

A week earlier, one of LA’s mayoral assistants had yelled at a gay couple kissing at a bus stop, citing “public decency” and threatening to call the police. The aide was given a tongue lashing by the L.A. Times, but the mayor declined to comment.

Once the Pink Menace got wind of it, our entire club was in an uproar. Wendell spoke with hellfire and brimstone, lit by the excited spark in his eyes, about his plans for the next march. He was practically bouncing in place imagining the change we’d be able to affect, the people we could help. Eli, his boyfriend, began the laborious process of collecting phone numbers, delegating tasks, and generally organizing everything as Wendell broadcasted wild enthusiasm across the room. This was always how things went, Wendell’s bright idea brought to life by Eli’s fast-acting pragmatism. They made the perfect couple, and in that moment I almost died from jealousy.

After his speech, Wendell descended from his microphone a king. He walked his way around the room, checking in with the poster artists and patting Mary, the chant writer, on the shoulder, before finally coming to me.

“Alex, my man, my buddy! Isn’t this exciting? It’s all getting real now, huh?” He laughed, then looked me jauntily in the eye. “You’re coming, aren’t you?”

“Man, I don’t know,” I fumbled, pretending to pull out my planner and fumble through it. “We got a group project meeting for Brit Lit and I’ve already rescheduled twice, so…”

Wendell stopped me with a finger to my lips and a cocky grin. “Look, Alex, you’re a good poet and an even better speaker. I want you out there reading that ‘Broken Mirrors’ piece on the courthouse steps, and I will not settle for any less. You’ll love it. It’s such a cathartic feeling, standing up and speaking out in public. You were locked in the closet so long back in Missouri, I think it’s time for you to get out there and sing.” To seal the deal, he leaned in and whispered, “It’s a great way to get out there and meet some guys, as well.”

I cleared my throat and nodded my assent. “Excellent! See you back in the room, buddy.” With a last, ephemeral wink, Wendell spun back into the chaos of activism, leaving me at the fringes.

 By the time we were lining up in front of the courthouse, I was a nervous wreck. Wendell had repeatedly assured me that it gets easier in the first ten minutes, that I would have fun. In this interminable moment, lined up next to sweaty, attractive gay men in California’s absurdly hot November weather, I had never felt like more of a fake. I grasped my little piece of paper with my poem scrawled on it like a cross. If Wendell “reminded” me to read it, I’d go ahead and do it, but there was no way in hell I was going to unless I absolutely had to.

Near the front of the line, Mary and Eli were handing out signs and running the Menace through their chants, Wendell hopping in place beside them. When the clock started to chime twelve, Wendell leapt forward and yelled, “All right, everybody! Let’s go!”

En masse, the Menace surged forward and erupted into chaotic noise. If you listened closely, you might be able to make out Mary’s “Equality Now!”, but the lack of agreement on the tempo, tone, and timbre of the phrase made it indistinguishable. Ultimately, Wendell yelled loudest and herded everybody onto his tempo, and the protest proceeded from there without a hitch.

I’ll admit, I started to lose myself in the protest. After all that buildup of me not liking the whole thing, it turned out that Wendell was right, and I would be able to loosen up. I began to chant with the group, quietly at first, then louder, and then finally I started screaming it, punching my fist to the sky. Eli saw me and cheered me on, grinning like a maniac as the spirit of excitement worked its way around the Menace. My poem slipped from my pocket, but I hardly noticed it. Now was not the time for frills and meaningful pauses. This was action.

Eventually, passersby stopped to gawk at us and make a few phone calls. The courthouse behind us remained staunch and unmoving, which made my chanting all the wilder. Let those conservative bastards watch us from their windows and sneer. We’d show them what faggots like us could do.

I looked around to find Wendell and confirm with him that my being there was definitely a good choice. Hell, maybe I’d give him a kiss, just to mess with the gawkers alongside us.

Wendell had branched off from the main group and was engaged in argument with a white guy wearing a LaCoste polo and cargo shorts. Wendell was whipping his arms around in demonstrative fury, clearly in his element. The polo guy, on the other hand, kept jabbing his finger in Wendell’s face like a spear. His blond mustache bristled with indignation. Behind him, his buddies were laughing and snapping photos.

I walked up beside Wendell and yelled, “Hey, what’s going on over here?”, squaring my shoulders to look as intimidating as possible. Wendell spared me a glance and an absent grin before returning to his point. The polo guy, however, looked me over and said, “Fuck you, faggot” before returning his gaze to Wendell.

I don’t know exactly why that triggered me as much as it did. I’d heard the same, worse even, back in high school, and borne it with resignation. Maybe it was Wendell’s slight flinch as he heard it. Maybe it was the way the guy’s eyes glimmered with excitement, the pleasure that comes with the self-confidence to insult whoever without giving a damn. Maybe it was the heat, or the fact that our protest was gathering only a modest crowd with no response from the mayor’s office even 2 hours in. Whatever it was, it burrowed beneath my skin and settled there like a red-hot coal in my stomach.

Before I even realized what was happening, my fist shot out and caught the polo guy right in the mouth. I felt his lips mash against his teeth and split open, as well as a loosely placed crown being ripped from its perch. The polo guy made a noise through the ruin of his lips and fell back, looking at me with a combination of hate and fear. Behind him, his buddies were silent save for the frantic snapping of photos. I got down on my knees and straddled him, and then began to rain punches down.

Wendell said something behind me, but I was beyond listening. My knuckles hurt faintly, but that sensation was coming from another world, broadcast across lightyears of space and garbled into raw, unintelligent noise. The polo guy was trying to bring his arms up to his face, but I had them pinned under my legs and he couldn’t get them free.

I felt arms grab me from the back and haul me up, away from the sniveling blonde on the ground. Eli shouted into my ear, “Calm down, man! Breathe!” I didn’t want to listen, but after it became clear that the arms wouldn’t let me go, I breathed long and deep. The world came back into focus, and the first thing I perceived was my knuckles screaming for attention, bleeding and torn.

Around us the protest was still going on. The Menace mostly hadn’t seen what happened, but Eli and Wendell were dragging me behind a planter, out of the main throng. The polo guy was being helped to his feet by his friends, his face an omelet. He was trying to shout after us and look tough, but he was swaying on his feet and his voice was slurred.

The first thing Wendell said to me was, “Are you all right?” Shame flowed through my body like a flood, and I instantly began to sob in response. I couldn’t control myself; at this point, I felt like I was a cloud hanging over my own brain, looking down at the switches and levers without a manual.  

#

“It was wet and rainy in the jungle, and Captain Mouse didn’t like the wet and the rain. So, he decided he would go and hide in a small hole to keep his fur nice and clean and wait out the rain.

“The rain went on for long and long, and eventually Captain Mouse fell asleep. He was very very tired from flying on Paul the Pigeon and he didn’t want to sit up looking at the rain. When he was asleep, he had a scary dream about Freddy the Fish, where he was chasing him through the woods with a big club and trying to hit him. It was very scary, and Captain Mouse didn’t sleep well at all.

“When he woke up, it was daytime again and Captain Mouse could see again. The rain had stopped, and his little hole was lit up from the sun. When he looked around, Captain Mouse saw something he hadn’t before. On the ground across from him was Danny the Dog’s favorite bone, the bone he never went anywhere without. ‘That’s strange,’ thought Captain Mouse. ‘This is Danny the Dog’s bone. Where’s Danny?’ He looked around the hole even more, but there was nothing there besides the bone and a whole lot of mud. Where could Danny be? And why had Freddy come back without him? It was time to go and talk to Freddy.”

#

For weeks afterwards I sat in my room, feeling a web of emotions tear through my body and leave behind nothing but ravaged nerve synapses. When I went to class, I sat in the back and didn’t say anything, a slug caught in its own slime trail. My grades began to dip, and my friends outside of the Menace started to wonder if I was depressed. Wendell did everything he could to make me feel better and apologized profusely for forcing me to attend one of his marches, but it didn’t really help. I felt that he was silently holding my outburst against me, as a stain on the movement he fought his whole life for.

The thing I fixated most on, what unraveled my sinews and turned my brain to apathetic mush, was the vague sense that I was a disappointment now to everybody. I wasn’t a good straight guy, I wasn’t a good queer, I wasn’t a good student, I wasn’t a good protester. I sure wasn’t a good son. I wanted to call my parents and apologize twenty or thirty times (for what I didn’t exactly know; generally being a disappointment, perhaps?), but I always resolved to do it later and allowed the idea to gently unhook itself from its life support.

A small reason for that had to have been our lack of real communication since I had arrived at L.A. Sure, I got two or three calls from Mom and Dad near the beginning, but after I assured them that I was settling in okay and that I just wanted a little space to figure myself out, the phone stopped ringing. What with the slam poetry I was writing about them and the sense I convinced myself I had that I was finally free from some benign tyranny, I had been giving myself a break. I would always have time later. At least, that’s what I thought, until Mom called me at four in the morning to tell me that Dad was dead.

#

“Captain Mouse stormed out of the forest, huffing and puffing with anger. He saw Freddy the Fish sitting on a rock nearby and walked up to him, Danny’s bone in his right paw like a club.

“’Freddy, what happened to my friend Danny? He was last out with you.’

“Freddy stretched out on his rock and threw his eyes wide. Captain Mouse was certain he was faking shock. ‘Why, whatever do you mean, Captain Mouse? Last I saw him, he was off chasing a branch that fell behind a tree. When I went after him, I saw that he wasn’t there anymore. That’s what I told Cathy, and that’s what I’m telling you now.’ His fin bent at the wrist, a dandy dismissal.

“Captain Mouse held up the bone and shook it at Freddy. ‘That’s not true. Danny likes pinecones, but he would never leave his favorite bone behind like this! I don’t trust you, Freddy the Fish. We’re going out into the jungle right now, and we’re going to look for Danny near that cave. I know you know what happened to him, and you’re going to tell me.’

“’All right,’ sneered Freddy. ‘We’ll go out and look for him, just like Cathy and I already did. We won’t find anything though.’ At the last second, Freddy added, ‘I hope we do.’ Captain Mouse said nothing but gave Paul the Pigeon a sneaky nod. Paul chirped back and flew up into the sky to keep a lookout for any bad guys that Freddy might have waiting for them as they searched.

“Captain Mouse and Freddy the Fish walked into the jungle together. Above them, the sky turned dark again. It looked like it was going to rain again.”

#

It was a car crash that did it.

I flew back for the funeral, after a hasty gathering of permission slips and half-sobbing breakdowns convinced them that I wasn’t lying to get out of class. Wendell agreed to grab all my work for me until I got back. In every story, every poem I told at the Menace HQ, my dad was the villainous conservative who wanted to convert me back to normality and hated all sissies, but Wendell seemed to see right through that. When I left, he gave me a long hug and whispered through his own tears, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Alex. He must have been a good man if you were his son,” before turning me reluctantly over to the TSA and a long, sleepless flight.

Mom and Teresa were both waiting to pick me up at the airport. I won’t bombard you with all the details; suffice to say there were a lot of group hugs, tears, and reruns of “Everybody Loves Raymond” to fill the empty soundwaves. Over crappy pizza and a glass of wine, Mom told me everything. Not that there was much to tell. It was a drunk driver; Nothing glamorous or exotic. Certainly not the fate such a good storyteller would have liked for himself, so dry and meaningless.

I didn’t cry then, nor did I cry lying in my bed. I didn’t even cry at the funeral, which was closed casket. What I did was read one of my poems, one that never made it to the Menace, about how he was the best dad a gay kid could ask for.

After it was all done (and so quickly and neatly, too), Mom pulled me over and gave me a note with Dad’s writing on it. “When you two left for college, we each wrote a little something for each of you. We were going to send it to you for Christmas, if you were too busy to come home.” She wiped her arm across her face. “I want you to have it; I already gave Teresa hers. He was up for two days straight writing those letters. Read it when we get home.” She gave me a last hug and kiss before wandering off to accept the condolences of our less important family members. I looked at the note; in the uppermost corner was a wedge of cheese with stink lines coming off it, the famous insignia of one Captain Mouse.

#

“Freddy was silent as they walked out into the jungle, and he kept looking just behind Captain Mouse as if he was searching for something. Every time Captain Mouse turned to look, there was nothing there, and Freddy would give a little smile. Danny’s bone sat in Captain Mouse’s hand like a baseball bat.

“’This is where I found the bone,” said Captain Mouse as they stopped near the hole. “Danny has to be somewhere around here. Tell me what you know.”

“’I’ve already told you that,’ said Freddy. ‘Danny ran off when we were out looking for leaves, the stupid mutt. I don’t know where he is now. It’s probably for the best though.’

“Captain Mouse’s blood boiled as he took a step towards Freddy. Somewhere else in the jungle, a crack of thunder sounded. ‘“For the best?’

“’Yes. Danny was always bad at looking for leaves, and he always ran off, and I’d have to go and find him. We never found any pretty leaves with him around, and the ones we did find he would step on. But now? Look!’ Freddy pulled a pile of beautiful maroon leaves from his pocket, all pristine and uncrackled. ‘These are the prettiest leaves in the jungle, and they’re all ours!’ He laughed happily.

“’Maybe he is bad at finding leaves, but Danny is our friend, and it’s important for him to be our friend, with us, together!’ yelled Captain Mouse. Before he knew what he was doing, he was lifting the bone high above his head and running at Freddy, who himself was reaching into his pocket for something. Behind them both, the bushes exploded and out came…”

#

“Dear Alex,

I hope this letter finds you well. Things are going well back here at the old homestead, although it feels odd without you kids here. Me and your Mom have to figure out how to keep ourselves busy; I’m going to start taking creative writing classes at Craven Community College and I’m really looking forward to it! You kids remember those Captain Mouse stories I told, right? I’m actually thinking of turning it into a series someday. It’d be a lot of fun!

Speaking of Captain Mouse, do you still remember that one I told about the jungle and Freddy the Fish? I’m sure you do; you and Teresa wouldn’t stop pestering me about it. You can tell a bad story when you hear one, you kids. I want to tell you the real version now, the one that doesn’t have a good ending shoehorned in. You’re old enough, and you deserve to know, after what I’ve put you through.

First off, you already know I served in Vietnam. 1969 to 1973. I was in the 201st, and we were stationed nearby Mount Cẩu đầu. Everybody who was lucky enough to come back from that said it was awful, hot, humid, wet, like a big cooking pot waiting to boil over. And they’re right. It feels odd to say this, but everything was heightened, like we were in the End Days and these were the last emotions we would ever feel, so we savored them and stewed in them. You have to understand that there were times we didn’t feel like people so much as scarecrows, scarecrows with guns and a muted understanding of things.

In the platoon with me were two guys, Privates William Houston and Gregory Carlton. They didn’t get along for fairly obvious reasons; Will was a Southern boy and a diehard evangelist, while Greg was…well, no use dancing around it now. He was gay, although he denied it at every turn. He wrote love letters (he wouldn’t call them “love letters”) to his boyfriend Thomas (He insisted Thomas was his “best friend”) back in the states weekly. It didn’t really bother any of the other boys; we were more concerned with surviving. Greg seemed to believe that it did, though, and he lashed out at anybody who he thought suspected him or disapproved of him, and Will was at the top of that list.

Things were tense but manageable between them for a while. It usually consisted of Greg saying something sardonic about Will’s intellect and Will muttering some quiet retort. Greg was always the one who started it, like he had something to make up for and was actively working to fix it. As for Will, he bore it all with the stoic patience of a martyr. I’m pretty sure he actually saw himself as being tested by God during those long, hot summer patrols.

Then, in August of ’71, things began to change.

With Summer dying into Autumn, the rains grew more pronounced and fierce, and thunderstorms became something we just lived with. Most days were spent in the platoon’s rickety shack, playing poker and wasting away. Grudging patrols usually just stepped under a nearby tree and smoked an hour or two before returning with no news of enemy movements. Our world shrank to a fifty-foot radius.

We all grew angrier, but nowhere was the change more noticeable than in Greg. Bumping shoulders with the guy would lead to a five minute long diatribe, and any loss at cards was instantly followed by accusations of cheating. His normally tidy beard spread and germinated across his face, and he took to muttering under his breath whenever he grew annoyed. There was only one outlet for him, one person who would take his bullshit; Will. That poor southern boy was shoved around like he was a push broom cleaning up all of Greg’s dirt, and he bore it silently. Gone were the muttered retorts and the clenched fists, replaced by a violent silence that scared all of us but Greg.

At the same time, I was hearing back from Sarah, my then-girlfriend, about everything that was going on at Stonewall. Apparently, there were a lot of protests with a lot of young folks getting hurt, even killed. From what I’d heard about him, Thomas was an avid protester; I found myself wondering how many cuts and bruises were filtering their way through him to Greg.

The breaking point came when me, Greg, Will, and a few other boys were out on patrol. Our CO was tagging along, so we had to abandon our favorite tree and actually do our jobs, to the dismay of us all. As we were slogging our way through the rain and the slopping leaves, grimacing loudly to each other, we heard a rustling in the bushes. We all gripped our rifles tight and huddled together, scanning our surroundings. After a little while, out of the bushes fell a young Vietnamese man, about twenty years old. He was skinny as a rail and deeply pale; I suspect he was burning up with a fever of some sort and nigh-on delirious.

“Hold up, boys,” shouted Lieutenant Kawol, shouldering his rifle and walking up to the young man, who was now lying on the ground shaking uncontrollably. He looked around and scanned the horizon before calling, “He’s alone.”

Greg, weapon still out, stomped up to the prone Charlie and gave him a kick in the stomach. “Where the fuck are your friends, huh? Where are they now, asshole?” he screamed. The butt of his rifle stabbed the ground inches from the kid’s face as he bucked and writhed.

“Calm down, private,” said Kawol forcelessly, scanning the tree lines. He took one step, then two, then silently immersed himself in the foliage, leaving us alone in the clearing. Behind him, Greg continued to yell and beat the young man.

‘We don’t need to take your shit; do you hear me?!’ Greg’s boot smacked into the young man’s kneecap with a resounding crack! The Vietnamese kid put a hand to his mouth and gagged.

“Hey, come on man, leave the poor boy alone. We’ll deal with him later,” rumbled Will.

Greg whipped around, ecstatic to have a new target. “Oh, well la-di-da, Pastor Houston. Maybe we all gotta join hands with Charlie and sing fucking ‘Hallelujah!’, huh? Fucking pansy-ass…We’re in the middle of a war, in case you didn’t notice. People back home are counting on us to FIGURE SHIT OUT!” With each word, he dug his heel deep into the kid’s stomach. Will stepped closer to Greg as I inched back. Despite the rain, the entire scene was radiating a sort of angry energy. I felt we were reaching an apotheosis of some kind.

“Look, do whatever you want, but don’t take your shame out on this kid!” Will spat the word “shame” out like a satanic verse, and it writhed on the ground between us.

“What-“ Before Greg could finish his sentence, we all heard a weak gargle from the kid. Greg looked down and saw the vomit, streaked with red, splayed out across his boot like a skinned animal. Before anyone could react, Greg put the rifle to the kid’s head. “Motherfucker,” he said conversationally, and blasted a hole through his skull. The shot echoed through the jungle.

“What did you do, you filthy queer?” shouted Will, eyes wide as dinner plates. I scanned the horizon around us, looking for the telltale glint of a muzzle.

“Shut up!” roared Greg.

Will couldn’t shut up. Words kept pouring from his mouth like an open wound. “You sodomites really are a plague on the Earth. You and your faggot boyfriend are going to die of AIDS, if he hasn’t already been beaten to death-“

Greg raised his rifle to Will. “SHUT UP!” he screamed and pulled the trigger. Click. Empty. That click was the loudest sound we ever heard, and it muted all of us. Greg lowered his rifle in shock.

Suddenly, Lieutenant Kawol burst in through the leaves, panting and gasping. “Jesus Christ, what the Hell is going on here?”

Before Will or I could speak, Greg answered. “The kid tried to take my rifle and escape. I had to kill him.” He gave us a look and slowly began to reload his rifle. We stayed silent.

“Well, if he had any friends, they’re gone now. Come on, let’s get back to camp and grab some grub.” Kawol walked off, leaving us to follow in silence.

Kawol, idiot though he was, must have sensed something off between Will and Greg. He didn’t send them out on any watches or patrols together for a long time, and they both sat waiting for the other to make a move.

The night came, however, when we were attacked in our sleep. Bullets sung us awake, and panic drove all other concerns from anyone’s mind. Kawol, in desperation and exceedingly poor judgment, sent Will and Greg out to check our Northeastern dugout, a good mile’s hike out, to make sure that the Charlies weren’t camped out there. They saluted and jogged off together, and I had the naïveté to hope that everything had been forgotten between them.

After the attackers were driven back, we started counting our dead. We had been decimated and were coming to terms with the enormity of it all when Greg limped in from the trees, alone.

He said that Will had been shot and killed by the Vietnamese, and that he’d done all he could to help. The strange thing was, when we all went to retrieve Will’s body and give it a decent burial a day later, there was nothing there. No signs of a struggle, no broken branches or footprints or even singed leaves from a smoking muzzle. Nothing.

“Those Charlies must have dragged him away or something.” Greg’s voice oozed smug certainty, like he’d gotten away with something. Perhaps I just thought I heard that, because it didn’t seem to register with anybody else. Kawol nodded sadly and led us back to the main camp, where we knocked together a quick ceremony for Will before returning back to our own living problems.

From that point on, Greg and I were inseparable, though not by my choice. He volunteered on every scouting mission and stakeout that I was going on, eyes glowing like he saw a ghost that nobody else could see. During those times, I made sure that there was somebody else along on those missions. From their side, I could see Greg burning with something.

Fewer and fewer letters came through for him, until eventually the “one” came. I don’t think I need to elaborate. “Pretty broken up over a guy who was ‘just a friend’,” joked Kawol to nobody in particular, chuckling to himself and shaking his head like it was the darndest thing. No one laughed, but no one spoke out, either. Greg was left alone to work himself out.

Around that time, the boys started noticing something different about the Vietnam jungle around us. I mean, it was already as good as an alien planet to us, but there was a sort of change in timbre. Some of the guys swear they saw Will’s ghost, or something like it, although any such reports were quickly dismissed as paranoia or Viet Cong mind games. One of them, Private Johnson, talked to me alone when everybody else was in bed about what he saw. I’d asked him about it. I was more than a little superstitious after my time out there, and I was prepared to believe most anything.

Johnson told me about how he thought it was Will at first, that maybe he hadn’t been killed at all. He’d been digging out a trench when he saw a helmet with Will’s signature outline of South Carolina on it moving just above the foliage, with what looked like a trail of smoke coming from underneath it, trailing high up until it got lost in the trees. Johnson wasn’t an idiot; he’d experienced honeytraps firsthand, and he knew that nothing out there was necessarily how it seemed. Folks who came in with innocence never came out. So, instead of calling out for Will, he ducked down in the trench and watched as the helmet slunk closer and closer. The jungle around him was surprisingly silent. At the very least, you’d hear the moisture dripping off the leaves incessantly. But there was nothing at all.

Finally, Johnson had had enough. The way he was describing it, he’d been lying there for hours. He grabbed a pebble and hucked it at the helmet, hitting South Carolina square in her capitol. It flew off with a hollow “thunk”, Johnson had said, as if there was nothing inside it at all. Immediately following the impact, the helmet dropped abruptly down out of view. Still, silence. It was the silence that was getting to him at this point, so Johnson stood up out of the ditch and threw another pebble at a puddle about 20 feet to his right. With the sound of the splash, Johnson stood up and ran for his life back in the direction of the camp. He only looked back once, and whatever he’d seen, he refused to tell me past that point. He muttered something about a local myth about vengeful spirits he’d heard some of the other privates chuckling about around the fire and shot a meaningful glance over at Greg’s sleeping form but said nothing more.

Eventually, the day had to come. Greg and I were in the middle of a midnight watch, the night after we saw a thin spiral of smoke emanating from our old Northeastern dugout, long abandoned. Thing was, and I didn’t tell anybody else this (least of all Greg), that stream of smoke looked more like a finger than anything else, a defiant, ethereal refusal of an injustice long since rotted. By that point, we’d moved our main campground a ways south, so it was far away enough to warrant a day trip or even longer to investigate. Kawol had sent us, along with Privates Yeltzin and Zamora, to check it out and report back later. The two privates, fresh f.n.gs both, were spooked by the sight of the abandoned clearing and volunteered hastily to report back initial impressions, leaving me and Greg alone on watch, to continue on foot to the smoke’s source the next day.

For a while we sat in silence. I remember everything about that night, too. Bugs swarmed around us, but I was too scared to move. There was a leaf right in my face, but I didn’t want to brush it away. I could sense the energy radiating from Greg, amplified now that he had nothing to lose. We sat back-to-back, just as Kawol taught us (yes, Forrest Gump actually had that right) so we could keep each other up.

Finally, Greg broke the silence. “What do you think the smoke is?” His voice was rusty and jagged. It caught and hung in the air.

“Man, I don’t know. Charlies are weird, you know? Maybe it’s some weird religious thing, I don’t know. Yeah, that’s probably it, and we hiked out here for nothing. That’d be just perfect, huh?” I heard how shaky my voice sounded and I hated myself for it. I looked down at my side and saw Greg’s fingers etching nonsense patterns in the dirt and wiping them out.

“Nothing out here happens for a reason. But nothing happens out here for no reason, either. Something is different here. Right here, in the campground. Feel it?”

I sat and felt. I didn’t feel anything except the weight of the night air and the tendrils of smoke that were just now drifting above us. What I saw, however, was a dark patch in the bushes.

It was hunched over and vague, with a faint silhouette that I couldn’t quite make out. Something around the top half was glowing a very faint orange, like a cigarette lighter. In the air above it I saw faint swirls of something, almost looked like jellyfish tendrils, spinning and contorting into galaxies.  I watched as a single bead of red liquid coalesced on a leaf, bent it down gradually, and then dropped off without a sound.

“Well?” Greg didn’t seem like he’d noticed anything. As we spoke, his voice edged gradually up, octave by octave, until I’d swear he was boiling like a teapot.

“Yeah, yeah, I feel it, Greg.” I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the bushes. I felt like I was keeping something horrible at bay, I was the watchman, and if I shirked in my duty or gave the slightest leniency, the floodgates would collapse, and we would be drowned in the thing.

I felt Greg nod against the back of my head, agreeing with my agreement. “Now, Mitch, I’m going to stand up, and then I’m going to tell you something.” Without any further warning, he stood, and I almost toppled over. I stayed upright, keeping my eyes on the bush all the while, which was now faintly shaking. More than one leaf was dripping, too.

Greg cleared his throat. When I didn’t turn, he coughed gently, which was then followed by a steel click. I turned.

Greg was standing upright, his gun pointed straight at my face. “I just wanted you to know that I’m not a faggot, Mitch. And I know you told everybody else in the squad I was. Just like that asshole Will.” His eyes gleamed, glazed with a saccharine thirst. “It’ll be quick.”

Suddenly, I heard the bushes explode behind me as a loud noise drowned the campground. If I had to put it to words, I would say it was a cross between a grasshopper’s reeee and a whale’s moan. I felt a tremendous pressure on my back as I saw Greg’s eyes lose their glaze and simply freeze. His mouth bobbed up and down like a buoy. He raised his gun in slow-motion and began to step backwards, firing off sporadic bursts towards me and the thing. I’m amazed to this day that none of them hit me, to be honest. At that moment, however, I was more concerned with booking it. I stood up and bolted to the left, as far away from the chaos as I could. Just before I got to the safety of the trees, I looked back. I want to say that it definitely wasn’t Will, that it was a bloodthirsty Viet Cong soldier or a wild animal, that I didn’t see a figure above it in the smoke and the burnt umbra sky, whose whiskers spiraled down from its blubbered face and attached to Will’s joints like IV drips. But I don’t know if I can.

There isn’t much else to say after that. I wandered in the trees for a while until I got my bearings and made it back to the group, where I told them that Viet Cong had attacked and killed Greg, and the smoke was just a campfire. They believed me, and I was given a week’s rest and double rations.

I’m telling you this, Alex, because of what I’ve put you through. I haven’t been exactly the quickest passenger on this whole Gay People train, and I put a lot of that to Greg. And I’m sorry for that. I love you; I always have, and I always will, and you deserve a more accepting father. That’s what I’m going to be for you from now on. There’s too much anger and vengeance in the world; one good thing I learned from Vietnam. We’re both looking forward to seeing you this Christmas!

-Dad

 

P.S.: Feel free to bring any boyfriends home so we can embarrass you with baby photos in front of him.”

#

What came out, Dad?

Don’t stop telling the story like that. What happened to Captain Mouse? Where is Danny, what happened to Freddy?

Dad heaved a big sigh and sat back in his chair. He looked up at the ceiling for a long time, and we held our breaths.

I think he’s crying, I whispered to Teresa.

No way, she said.

“Out of the bushes jumped Danny the Dog!”

WHAT? Wow, he was out there all this time?

“’Hello, Captain Mouse. Hello, Freddy! I’ve been out here all this time looking for leaves. I wanted to apologize to you, Freddy. You’re right, I do run off all the time and sometimes I step on leaves, but I’m just having fun. I want to have fun with you, together, so I’ll be more careful next time.’ Danny jumped up on Freddy and started licking him on the cheeks, both of them laughing together.

“’That’s all right, Danny. Really, I’m sorry too. I got too interested in the leaves and forgot that it was about friendship, that we were coming out into the woods to have fun together.”

I thought it was a jungle, Dad.

“’Coming out into the jungle to have fun together. Can you forgive me?’

“’Of course!’ cried Danny, and they got together and hugged. Captain Mouse put down the bone and shook his head, laughing too. The clouds above cleared, and the sun shone down brightly on the three friends.”

#

After a while, I began to feel better. The relatives and well-wishers gradually blew away in the wind until only Mom, Teresa, and I were left. Our house slowly settled in like a favorite pair of shoes, and we fell back into a rhythm together. If there’s any ghost in my side of the story, he’s a benevolent one, content to relax into the eaves and the family photos to remind us of how lucky we all are to love each other. When we left back for school, it was with the tacit understanding that we could take on anything, together, and that Dad was proudly watching over us all and smiling.

Teresa’s pre-Law tenure at Harvard ended magnificently, with a Cum Laude commendation and big dreams for Grad school. She came out of that with certification and an emphasis on LGBT rights. In a way, I guess she really never did stop being my bodyguard. She’s out living in New York City with her husband and making the big bucks, and we’re both looking forward to Thanksgiving back at home with Mom. And Dad, our friendly house ghost.

As for me, by the time I got back to UCLA, I was reenergized. Wendell and Eli never left my side at first, offering very welcome shoulders to cry on. As the semester wore on, and my grades began to rise, slowly at first, then up to As and Bs, they were the first (after Mom of course) to clap me on the back and take me out for a beer. I ended up majoring in Creative Writing and settled down in Los Angeles with Ronnie to write Captain Mouse children’s books, where I am very happily stationed to this day.

I am a better person thanks to my father. When the world around me goes crazy, I like to think back to him, and how, despite everything he saw and did in Vietnam, he came through and was able to still see the good in everybody. When he made a misstep, which was rare, he never forgave himself. Captain Mouse’s trip to the jungle was an act of contrition and reparation for a crime never committed. Well, Dad, if you’re reading this, I want you to know that, as your gay son, I love you, and if you need me to forgive you, I forgive you. You were always a great storyteller.

#

“When they returned to Cathy Cat, the sun had scared away the rainclouds and their paws were full of leaves. Cathy laughed and put them all up on her wall to celebrate, and Freddy and Danny wished Captain Mouse a fond farewell as he flew back home on Paul the Pigeon. He couldn’t wait to see Alex and Teresa again and tell him all about his big Jungle Adventure, and the new friends he made. Because, after all, when things get scary, and life throws you a curveball, it’s best to remember that anything is possible when you do it together.

The end.”  

Image Source:
Photo by Jose Urbano on Unsplash